Mary and the Witch’s Flower

With Japan­ese ani­mé pow­er­house Stu­dio Ghi­b­li hav­ing announced the end of an era, the producer/​director team pre­vi­ous­ly respon­si­ble for their strik­ing teenage ghost sto­ry When Marnie Was There wise­ly decid­ed to take their leave and set up their own ani­mé operation.

As with Marnie and Hiros­ma Yonebayashi’s debut fea­ture Arri­et­ty, the source is once more a high­ly-regard­ed Eng­lish nov­el for chil­dren, Mary Stewart’s ​‘The Lit­tle Broom­stick’ – which Dis­ney near­ly adopt­ed in the ear­ly 1980s.

With its tale of a young girl rather sur­prised to find her­self a star pupil at an exclu­sive acad­e­my for trainee witch­es, many view­ers will feel there’s more than a hint of Hog­warts in the air, but since Stewart’s sto­ry dates from 1971, the chain of influ­ence might pos­si­bly be run­ning in the oppo­site direction.

Either way, the open­ing sequence is knock­out stuff, with a young lass nab­bing a potent cut­ting of so-called witch’s flower from an explod­ing cas­tle that’s seem­ing­ly some evil genius’ hide­out. Alas, the girl’s broom­stick-rid­ing skills let her down as she makes her escape, crash­ing to earth in what looks like some leafy cor­ner of England.

Things set­tle down after this pul­sat­ing pro­logue as we spend time with teenag­er Mary, who (in time-hon­oured Ghi­b­li fash­ion) has been packed o to the sticks for the sum­mer hols while her folks are at work. She’s bored, bored, bored in the coun­try­side around her elder­ly aunt’s big house, and though we know she’s sure­ly due for a fan­tas­ti­cal adven­ture, what rest­less red-head Mary real­ly wants is to find some pur­pose in her life.

Which is why in sto­ry terms she’s so sus­cep­ti­ble to the sur­pris­ing turn in store. No, it’s not that she finds her­self in the alter­nate real­i­ty of Endor Col­lege, seat of learn­ing for all things witchy, where her seem­ing­ly innate gift for sor­cery makes her the new favourite of scary head mis­tress Madame Mum­ble­chook. We almost expect­ed as much.

The real sur­prise is that Endor’s spells and potions work in con­cert with sci­en­tif­ic exper­i­men­ta­tion, dri­ven by a thirst for pow­er that’s left a trail of failed ani­mal exper­i­ments in its wake. This is the seri­ous moral enquiry of HG Wells’ ​‘The Island of Dr More­au’ and a world away from the cur­rent genre tru­isms where mag­i­cal poten­cy is often a pos­i­tive route towards teenage self-realisation.

It’s cheer­ing to see such ambi­tion at play, though nei­ther the slight­ly under­writ­ten pro­tag­o­nists or mono-dimen­sion­al vil­lains are rich enough to give the intrigu­ing themes much nar­ra­tive trac­tion. Still, Yonebayashi whips the action scenes along, and does an eye-catch­ing job with the slight­ly sin­is­ter won­der­land that is Endor College.

Plen­ty of echoes at this stage of pre­vi­ous Ghi­b­li offer­ings, from the perky air­borne young witch in Kiki’s Deliv­ery Ser­vice to the pow­er­ful grande dame antag­o­nist of Spir­it­ed Away, though the ter­rif­ic Eng­lish dub, which gives the voice cast dia­logue they can real­ly get stuck into, is as good or bet­ter than any­thing else in the Ghi­b­li catalogue.

Over­all, Stu­dio Ponoc’s first out­ing doesn’t quite add up to a clas­sic, but there’s enough qual­i­ty on dis­play that fans and neo­phytes alike should still be rea­son­ably satisfied.