I Loved this film

Rating: 10/10 (31 October 2002)

I saw this film for the first time on Japanese television a couple of years ago. This is one of the few feel-good films I ever saw that drove this normally left-brained engineer to a teary-eyed sentimentality. It is a story about two sisters, Mei and her elder sister Satsuki, who had just moved to a house in the country. Their father, a teacher, looks after them as their mother is ill in the hospital. While playing in the garden, Mei sees a strange furry character and takes after it. The events that follow lead her and Satsuki to a wondrous backyard adventure with magical creatures. Are they real? Imaginary? This film has a cuteness factor that runs off the scale. As it is with most Japanese films, it really needs to be seen in its original language form, subtitled if necessary, rather than the dubbed VHS and DVD forms available in the US.