Children Who Chase Lost Voices From Deep Below

A quiet life in provincial Japan for schoolgirl Asuna is shattered by a strange signal on her homemade crystal radio set and a near fatal encounter with a bear-like monster on a railway bridge, prelude to a magical adventure. This anime feature boasts wonderfully detailed design in both realist and fantastical modes, and an ambitious thematic strain pondering our ability to accept the death of loved ones, yet can’t quite pull the story together in a way which does its inspiration justice. Stodgy pacing, clichéd characters and exposition-heavy writing make this far more of a drag than it needs to be, and the sense that most of the elements have already been done better in the Miyazaki filmography hangs over the whole enterprise.