The Imaginary (2023)

In gorgeous anime, a girl and her invisible new friend go toe-to-toe with Evil

Amanda and Rudger soar in imaginative flight above the frightening world below

The Imaginary (2023)

Streaming on Netflix

After reading J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone (1997), I never opened the following six novels in the popular series.  Why not?  Because in that first book I couldn’t find any rhyme or reason for the otherworldly events that kept popping up.

But Rowling’s vast readership seems to suggest that fantasy requires no “logic”.  It’s the magic, the astonishment itself, that keeps you turning pages.

Since the books, set in the wizards’ haven of Hogwarts, were about magic, millions of readers, and not only children, were swept up in the complex sorcery and never wanted to leave the place.

I didn’t join them because I’ve never wanted to feel sealed off like that.  I’ve kept looking for fantasy that, when its wonders cease, leaves me somewhere in my own reality.

That is, in a region of my mind that the fantasy prompted me to dig down for, that was lying in wait before I opened the book or saw the movie.

I hit pay dirt in The Imaginary.   It doesn’t build a world to “escape” to.  Instead, it invites you to rekindle your inborn yearning to imagine.  To recall when, as a child, imagining freed your mind to soar and made you feel like a bigger better braver you.

It starts low-key.  In London we’re introduced to Amanda Shuffleup, an unwizardly young girl around 10 years old living with her widowed mother Elizabeth (called “Lizzie”) who runs the bookshop they live above.

Amanda’s father died a while ago, and since then Lizzie has watched her daughter grow absentminded and increasingly seek refuge in her imagination.

One day Amanda finds in her bedroom closet a boy her age named Rudger.  He’s as pleased as she is at her discovery, and the two feel a twinship, a connection.  It intensifies when they realize that Lizzie can’t see or hear Rudger, nor can anyone else.

From the start, the gorgeous hand drawn animation, owing its style to Japanese anime techniques, isn’t merely trying to “astonish” us.  It’s more the case that colorful images billow on screen in order to free our minds, to let us wonder along with these two coltish young experimenters.

Their combined imaginations sweep them out of Amanda’s bedroom across far-flung landscapes, send them deep into outer space and plunge them into swirling oceans.  Suddenly they’re seated in a toy box pulled over hill and dale by a speeding ox, or whisked off in a silvery spaceship, or borne aloft in a flying boat.

When it comes to imagination, this script pulls off an enchanting switcheroo.  Following the design of A.F. Harrold’s 2014 novel The Imaginary (for readers aged 8 to 12), the story suggests that creatures we imagine are actually searching for us.

Yoshiaki Nishimura’s screenplay deftly telescopes Harrold’s sprawling narrative into a rambunctious suspense narrative.

Remember, Amanda didn’t summon Rudger.  He was already in her closet when she opened the door.  He found her. He’s an “imaginary” who can only keep existing by joining forces with a human counterpart like Amanda.

There are limitless numbers of imaginaries similar to yet weirdly distinct from Rudger, and any of them could be in danger from the evil Mr. Bunting, an ominous figure who lives to eat them.

He licks his chops at the thought of consuming Rudger.  When Amanda is felled in a street accident and carried off to the hospital, Rudger is suddenly adrift.  Bunting, accompanied by a murderous, hollow-eyed female wraith, moves in for the kill.

An amazed Rudger and newfound fellow “imaginaries” secreted in “The Library”

Rudger flees, but where can he go?  Zinzan, a wise old cat, appears and leads him to “The Library”, a headquarters for imaginaries.  It’s actually a large public library where these zany creatures waiting to be imagined frolic among patrons who can’t see or hear them.

After hours, with the place to themselves, they share their dreams, each hoping to find a person to imagine them.  Their lifespan is perilous.  Without a person, often a trusting child, willing and able to believe in them, they begin to fade and finally disappear.

Now that Rudger is part of this nurturing collective, he gains the courage to return to Amanda and re-seal their bond for however long it can last. He has to hurry because, lying in the hospital Amanda, too, can become prey to the designing Mr. Bunting, who’ll surely force her to beckon Rudger back into her life.

Spellbinding and dazzlingly illustrated as this pulsing rescue plot is, and for all Bunting’s icy vindictiveness, this isn’t simply a rousing tale of good racing to conquer evil.

It comes down to believing in what you can’t prove, which is precisely what everyone else tells you can’t possibly be so:  that “imaginaries” are real.  A tall order.  It relies on evidence of things not seen.  Call it faith or, if you prefer, trust, but it doesn’t come out the end of a magic wand, as matters are determined for Harry Potter.

Anime is new to me, and I had to adjust to its parameters.  It doesn’t try to approximate fluid body motions, in people or in creatures.

Movements are stiff and constricted, with a range of motion that is starkly dramatic yet paradoxically not exactly lifelike.  A raised head or a slouched shoulder can be enough to signal alarm, despair or longing.

Mostly, as those familiar with anime will know, we see the drama unfold by intensely gazing into the widened eyes of both humans and creatures.  Their eyes often fill the screen. Large, brightly expressive, moist, narrowed or weeping orbs convey a swarm of emotions.

While the story’s setting is clearly in London, the vocal work in this Studio Ponoc production is in Japanese (including lines spoken beautifully by LeVar Burton), and the subtitling, which is spotty here and there, needs to be followed closely.

But the underlying belief in the “impossible” doesn’t waver, speckled with fear, elation, rage or love.  Director Yoshiyuki Momose sees to it that the animation shimmers. He also makes sure the cast fill their lines with rapture and urgency.

It’s the polyglot blend of performances as much as the ravishing visuals that kept me engaged.  The acting has a highwire tautness that rarely lapses into a cheap, unearned “poignance”. 

To my far from experienced eye in fantasy and animation, this seems an exceptional visual accomplishment that keeps its focus on its controlling question:  What if, right now, creatures are hovering nearby, pining for us to imagine them?

What if it’s not our flight from reality that causes us to imagine, but forces from the wide imaginary world that are clamoring to get inside us where we can imagine them furiously, rapturously?

Perhaps imagination is a two-way street.  Maybe it takes imaginers and imagined goading and inspiring each other to keep us reaching for the stars.