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Maboroshi

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2:23

Maboroshi

2023

1h 51m

Drama

Fantasy

Romance

Anime

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Tomatometer

Popcornmeter

67%

Tomatometer

9 Reviews

67%

Popcornmeter

50+ Ratings

A factory explosion plunges a small town into a timeless freeze, leaving 14-year-old Masamune and his pals to grapple with a quickly collapsing reality.

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Nelson Acosta

Koimoi

MAPPA, The king of modern anime is back with an original anime film but the story is convoluted and lacks impact.

Rated: 2.5/5

Jul 3, 2024

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James Marsh

South China Morning Post

Ultimately, Maboroshi emerges as one giant, lumbering metaphor for the trials and tribulations of adolescence, devoid of subtlety and likely to exasperate older viewers who have long outgrown such trivial insecurities.

Rated: 2/5

Feb 5, 2024

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Charles Solomon

FilmWeek (LAist)

The storyline is a little more convoluted than it needs to be and the film is a little longer than it needs to be, but that image of a life that just continues so drearily and endlessly without any change is quite chilling.

Feb 1, 2024

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JK Sooja

Common Sense Media

Also painfully slow, melodramatic, and long, this perplexing drama will make most viewers feel like they are also frozen in time.

Jan 25, 2024

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Elijah Gonzalez

Paste Magazine

Part elegy and part celebration of the past, it makes for an evocative, unusual ghost tale.

Rated: 7.9/10

Jan 25, 2024

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Mariló Delgado

Espinof

Maboroshi is a cerebral film, with a continuous tone of nostalgia that (honestly) has to catch you in the right frame of mind so it doesn't leave you wrecked and feeling like a stew. [Full review in Spanish]

Rated: 4/5

Jan 17, 2024

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Maxim K

Donnie Darko meet The mist, great anime

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

05/23/25

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Audience Member

I have never written a review here before, but Maboroshi absolutely deserves one. Great character development, original story that was extremely well developed, in a beautiful world. The film is a bit complicated to understand (wich is something good), since the entire trama not only is a CLEAR alegory to Plato's theory, but it also gives a great and interesting view on what makes us human, and what makes us be. To be honest, people that review the movie as "bad" are too stupid to get the true beauty of it, it's slow because it HAS to be (with such a complicated trama), and it's hard to get because it causes way more impact and tought after watching it. Overall great drama and romance experience, if you love the theme, and if you are able to think (thing that many people here dont seem to be able to do), id tell you its a must watch.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

04/10/25

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Paul S

It's definitely one of the weirder anime movies I've seen, but overall, it was an incredibly moving and beautiful film. I'd definitely recommend it for anime fans!

Rated 4.5 out of 5 stars

04/16/25

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Master e

É uma história meio complicada de se entender, mas existem momentos bem legais de se acompanhar e tem um final surpreendente.

Rated 4 out of 5 stars

02/11/25

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Amine T

It's great anime at first it's hard to understand story but when you understands it's make you smile and cry at that same time.

Rated 5 out of 5 stars

09/09/24

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NASHVILLE I

Sloppy storytelling kills it. The supposed driving force in the story, the explosion, happens in the first few minutes but then it's treated like a mediocre afterthought. It's frustratingly unclear throughout what exactly's going on, and that's not due to plot twists; the writers weren't focused on what they wanted to matter to the audience.

Rated 1.5 out of 5 stars

01/08/25

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Mari Okada

Director

Seimei Kidokoro

Director

Junya Enoki

Masamune Kikuiri

Reina Ueda

Atsumi Sagami

Misaki Kuno

Itsumi

Taku Yashiro

Daisuke Sasakura

Maboroshi: Trailer 1

2:23

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Synopsis

A factory explosion plunges a small town into a timeless freeze, leaving 14-year-old Masamune and his pals to grapple with a quickly collapsing reality.

Director: Mari Okada, Seimei Kidokoro
Producer: Manabu Ohtsuka
Screenwriter: Mari Okada
Distributor: Netflix
Production Co: Mainichi Newspapers, Bushiroad, MAPPA, Warner Bros. Pictures Japan, Legs, Kadokawa, Nature Lab., Dentsu, Movic, Lawson Group, Cygames
Genre: Drama, Fantasy, Romance, Anime
Original Language: Japanese
Release Date (Streaming): Jan 15, 2024
Runtime: 1h 51m

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