Studio Ponoc’s “The Imaginary” gives Calvin and Hobbes an anime touch

This review of The Imaginary is timed to coincide with the film’s festival premiere at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France. The film will stream on Netflix in America starting July 5.

As Studio Ponoc’s first anime film, Mary and the Witches’ FlowerPremieres 2017, it was a relief — a promise that the legacy of the famous Japanese animation studio Studio Ghibli would not be completely lost when Ghibli reportedly wants to close its doors. Founded by Ghibli veteran Yoshiaki Nishimura (producer of Memories of Marnie And The Tale of the Princess Kaguya) and by hiring former Ghibli employees to retain their experience and skills for future animation projects, Ponoc was openly announced as Ghibli’s successor. Mary and the Witches’ Flower was so clearly modeled on Ghibli’s designs and storytelling that the transition seemed like a fait accompli.

But Ghibli stayed in business, and co-founder Hayao Miyazaki worked on another animated film. The Boy and the Heronwhile his son Goro experimented with digital animation to create the TV movie Earworm and the WitchAnd Ponoc’s production has been sluggish over the past seven years, with no new feature films – only the charming short film collection Modest heroesand some nice advertising projects. The new feature The Imaginary is a second round of relief for animation fans – both because the company is still in the film business and because The Imaginary sees it’s only just beginning to move away from outright Ghibli imitation. (And, incidentally, because 2024 has been a terrible year for imaginary friends at the movies so far.)

The Imaginary just premiered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival in France and will be coming to Netflix on July 5th via an exclusive distribution deal. Adapted from a 2014 novel by British author AF HarroldThe film is about a brave young girl named Amanda and her imaginary friend Rudger. (Not “Roger,” as she and Rudger keep indignantly reminding people, but Rudderwhich is pronounced pretty much the same in the Netflix dub and the kids’ posh British accents.) Rudger is a little blond boy who accompanies Amanda on all her imaginary adventures and seems to view her more as a playmate than a creator, though it’s notable that she occasionally treats him like a favorite toy—something to be respected and loved, but still to be pushed around a bit for excitement and drama.

Amanda’s father recently died, and while her mother Elizabeth is struggling to keep the family bookstore afloat, she is ready to close it and move on to more secure work. Elizabeth seems like a kind woman who is a bit at the end of her rope, trying to cope with grief, a failing business, and a hyperactive child who leaves chaos in his wake by having his head in the clouds and then blames it on his imaginary friend. Their dynamic feels remarkably like the frustrated family energy In Calvin and Hobbes: Elizabeth wants Amanda to clean up after herself and pay attention to her surroundings, while Amanda is distracted by the elaborate, adventurous worlds she creates. But while Hobbes’ relationship with Calvin’s mother mostly boils down to mild frustration that she doesn’t make tuna sandwiches more often, Rudger has more melancholy yearnings. He also considers Elizabeth his mother and wishes that she could see and acknowledge him.

There is much more Calvin and Hobbes Energy in the game in The Imaginary: Like Bill Watterson’s comic book duo, Amanda and Rudger climb into a box and it suddenly becomes a vehicle that flies through the air as the real world disappears. The games they play together are more real to them than anything else in the world, and their partnership is more alive and crucial than Amanda’s other friendships.

The film’s most exciting and visually impressive scenes always occur when the story drifts into the world of fantasy, where form is fleeting and fluid. People, objects and settings transform at will, and the possibilities seem limitless. Ghibli animator Yoshiyuki Momose (Spirited Away, Red Pork, Whisper of the heart) stages the film with a devotion to shapeshifting and symbolic displacement Hayao Miyazaki brings his best films. (Millennium Actress, paprikaAnd Perfect Blue Director Satoshi Kon made a similar fluidity of form a trademark of his films, though usually with a deliberate aggressiveness and a sense of nightmarish menace rather than the expression of bouncy joy of Miyazaki and Momose.)

But while Miyazaki films generally don’t have real villains, The Imaginary has a particularly compelling and present threat. There are also plenty of Miyazaki-style emotional stakes – Rudger, like other imaginary friends, is in danger of disappearing if Amanda doesn’t focus on him, and he sees firsthand what happens to “imaginary” ones whose children die, grow up, or move on. But The Imaginary The danger is heightened by an actual villain, better discovered than described, who, alongside all the light-hearted observations of children’s adventures in the worlds they create, brings an old-fashioned sense of gleeful, malicious malice to the film.

The ImaginaryThe animation of still shows a lot of Ghibli influence, from the crowded, painterly spaces full of shiny, detailed objects to the way the characters cry, with streams of oversized, sticky tears pumping down their faces in messy rivers. In close-ups when they’re experiencing big emotions, Amanda and Rudger look a lot like Ghibli characters, nothing like the brand name, just a little different from the model. But Ponoc’s film also moves closer to his own look – a softer, more painterly color scheme, thinner lines and flatter colors, and character designs that are a little closer to Toho-Towa’s 1989 international release. Little Nemo: Adventures in Slumberland than to a specific Ghibli film.

And Ponoc’s film also seems to be aimed more closely at younger viewers than most of Ghibli’s work. The screen is frequently full of high-energy frenzy, as when Rudger encounters an entire colony of displaced imaginers or the story drifts into another child’s fantasy world. But the story itself is fairly simple and straightforward, dealing with feelings of pain, loss and fear in Pixar style. There are a few genuinely scary moments, but for the most part the film maintains a child-friendly perspective, with children facing dangers and solving problems that adults are unaware of, and playtime frequently taking center stage.

The Imaginary is visually and narratively not as rich as Mary and the Witches’ Floweror as transcendent as Miyazaki projects like The Boy and the Heron. But it feels like a step in the right direction for Ponoc, an attempt to find its own voice and footing. It may not be remembered with the same enthusiasm decades from now as Ghibli’s early projects, but if Ponoc continues to experiment and branch out, it could well be remembered as the first step toward creating its own distinctive creative legacy and stepping out of Ghibli’s shadow. In the meantime, it’s a dizzyingly thrilling experience for young anime fans, a film meant to visualize what it feels like to daydream as a child, to immerse yourself in a world of absolute fantasy where everything else falls away.

The Imaginary is coming to Netflix on July 5th.