General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20265 min read

Mai Mai Miracle (マイマイ新子と千年の魔法)

Mai Mai Miracle (マイマイ新子と千年の魔法) is a 2009 Japanese animated film directed and written by Sunao Katabuchi, produced by the studio Madhouse, and adapted from Mai Mai Shinko, an autobiographical novel by the Akutagawa Prize-winning novelist Nobuko Takagi about her own childhood.¹^•² It was distributed by Shochiku and opened in Japan on 21 November 2009, running 93 minutes.¹

Key fact	Detail
Original title	マイマイ新子と千年の魔法 (Mai Mai Shinko to Sennen no Mahō); English title Mai Mai Miracle¹^•²
Release	21 November 2009, Shochiku; 93 minutes; produced by Madhouse¹
Setting	Kokuga area of Hofu City, Yamaguchi Prefecture, in the decade of 1955 to 1964, with imagined scenes of the same town 1,000 years earlier²
Source	Mai Mai Shinko, an autobiographical novel by Akutagawa Prize winner Nobuko Takagi²
Director	Sunao Katabuchi (born 1960, Osaka), previously assistant director on Kiki's Delivery Service and director of Princess Arete³
Festival premieres	World premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival; advance screening at the Ottawa International Animation Festival⁴
Voice cast and music	Mayuko Fukuda, Nako Mizusawa, Ei Morisako, Manami Honjō; music by Hidekiyo Murai⁵

Spoilers

Story and setting

The story follows Shinko, a cheerful third-grade girl living in an old family house in the Kokuga area of Hofu, Yamaguchi Prefecture, in the Japan of the late 1950s. Shinko has a double hair whorl, called a "mai mai," on her forehead, and her favorite pastime is imagining the town as it stood 1,000 years earlier, in the Heian period, when the region was part of the old province of Suō and the provincial capital, the kokuga, stood on the same ground; her grandfather's stories feed these imaginings, which extend to the lively life of a small princess of that age.⁶^•¹

The plot turns on friendship. A transfer student from Tokyo, Kiyoko, has trouble fitting into the countryside; Shinko takes an interest in her, the two grow close while playing with classmates such as Shigeru and Tatsuyoshi, including an absorbed project to build a dam pond, and the film follows their joyful and sometimes painful season together.⁶ The Japan Media Arts Festival description notes that the film depicts the rural Hofu landscape of roughly 55 years before its making and the city that existed on the same spot 1,000 years ago as if they exist at the same time.²

Production

Origin at Madhouse. Katabuchi has described how the producer Jun'go Maruta of Madhouse read the original Mai Mai Shinko, found it closely resembled his own childhood, and proposed animating it. At the time Madhouse, besides adapting well-known manga, wanted to make art animation from sources such as picture books, and a distinctive project of this kind fit that aim.⁷

The delayed ending. Although the film was released in November 2009, the film itself was nearly complete during 2008. The production decided to hold it until a decisive final element was found, and that element was the ending music. A version finished around the end of 2008 carried only a temporary ending of medleyed background music in the manner of American films, with no pictures. After discussions about how the film should close, the singer-songwriter Kotringo was brought in; her song required ending visuals, which were produced in the summer of 2009, completing the film.⁷ The score's in-film music also features scat by the singer-songwriter Minako "mooki" Obata, at Katabuchi's request.³

Research and imagination. The production staff conducted thorough research and then used imagination to recreate the landscapes and children that actually existed, in the way children themselves imagine the past.² Katabuchi later said that research for this film taught him that the young Heian-period writer Sei Shōnagon had lived as a child in Hofu, the film's setting, and this discovery became the starting point for his later project about her.⁸

Release and reception

After advance screenings from 14 November 2009, the film opened nationwide on 21 November 2009 on 38 screens.⁹ It had already premiered abroad, with a world premiere at the Locarno International Film Festival in Switzerland and an advance screening at the Ottawa International Animation Festival.⁴

Katabuchi has said plainly that the film's box office was not strong.¹⁰ Its reputation, however, grew steadily. The film was screened for its 10th anniversary at Ion Cinema Hofu, and a 15th-anniversary screening with the lead voice actress Mayuko Fukuda attending was announced in 2024, alongside a Katabuchi retrospective program, "The Road Leading to the Girls of Tsurubami Color," held 26 April to 2 May 2024 at Demachiza in Kyoto.¹¹^•⁷ On the review aggregator Filmarks the film holds a rating of 3.6 out of 5 from more than 4,300 user reviews.¹²

Place in Katabuchi's career

The film is the direct starting point of Katabuchi's later work. Soon after its release, in early 2010, he proposed animating Fumiyo Kōno's manga In This Corner of the World, a manga he had long loved; the film was eventually released in 2016.⁹ Katabuchi has said that many people told him Mai Mai Miracle was moving everywhere he looked, a feeling he could not share while making it, and that he understood that feeling only when he read In This Corner of the World, which fans of the earlier film and residents of Hofu had recommended to him.¹³ The director Isao Takahata, after watching Mai Mai Miracle, said nothing but patted Katabuchi on the shoulder.¹⁴

The film's title phrase also carries Katabuchi's own history: he has noted that "the magic of a thousand years" was an idea he had formulated when making Princess Arete, the thought that human imagination can reach even 1,000 years back, and he recognized while making Mai Mai Shinko that the story would converge on that flow of time.¹⁵

References

Topic: Encyclopedia › Arts and culture › Screen and stage › Film and television › Films and standalone screen works › Films by genre, form, and subject › Animated and short films › Japanese anime features › Released 1999 to 2013

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026 · Last review: Oct 25, 2026

Notice something wrong?