Sneha Jaiswal (Twitter | Instagram)
I really wanted to like this and didn’t even have high expectations as such. But it’s so boring that I started to zone out with 45 minutes still left to go! I did watch all of it, while fighting the urge to fall sleep, even though it was only 8 pm (before dinner) and I rarely go to bed before 2 am these days. If you by any chance you thought that Hayao Miyazaki’s “The Boy and The Heron” was slow, then “My Oni Girl” will make it look like “The Fast and The Furious”.
Director Tomotaka Shibayama (“A Whisker Away”) has co-written the script for the animated fantasy film “My Oni Girl” (Original title: Suki demo kirai na amanojaku) with Yûko Kakihara. The story follows teenager Yatsuse Hiiragi, who meets an Oni (a supernatural demon that looks human) called Tsumugi and decides to help her on her quest to find someone in the human realm.
Hiiragi runs away from home at night with Tsumugi, because he is upset over his dad hiring a private tutor for him, instead of letting him attend cram classes like everybody else. It’s not even like Hiiragi’s parents are mean or evil. Both his parents are very cool about him showing up with Tsumugi at their home in the evening (before they run away without informing anybody). They don’t even know her, yet they cook up a nice meal for her and even ask her to stay over for the night because it starts to rain out of the blue. Hiiragi is essentially portrayed as a repressed young man, who hides away his feelings and doesn’t speak his mind, even though the creators aren’t convincingly able to establish what his problem is. In-fact, Hiiragi doesn’t have a personality at all, Tsumugi in comparison has some spark and is determined to complete her mission. Hiiragi is her boring human navigator.
Visually, “My Oni Girl” looks pretty good for an animated movie, featuring cute character designs and beautiful settings that seem to blend 2D and 3D animation seamlessly. Tsumugi resembles the manic-pixie dream girl stereotype with her short silver-pink hair and boundless energy, she made me briefly think about Ramona Flowers from the Scott Pilgrim comics. However, Tsumugi’s personality is much more straightforward—she’s simply a runaway searching for someone. However, the world-building and mythical aspects of the story, such as the hidden world where supernatural beings like Tsumugi live, aren’t woven in an engaging manner.
With an almost 2-hour runtime, “My Oni Girl” (Suki demo Kirai na Amanojaku) feels far too overstretched, featuring climactic twists that make little sense. While that’s often acceptable for a fantasy movie about demons and gods, here, it’s just not fascinating. Perhaps younger viewers who haven’t seen a lot of teen fantasy animated movies might just enjoy this movie a lot more, however, seasoned fans of anime, the kinds who’re familiar with the genre will find it far too mundane.
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