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Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror (ホッタラケの島 〜遥と魔法の鏡〜)

Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror (ホッタラケの島 〜遥と魔法の鏡〜, Hottarake no Shima: Haruka to Mahō no Kagami) is a 2009 Japanese full-CG animated fantasy film directed by Shinsuke Sato, in which a sixteen-year-old girl follows a fox-like creature into a world built from forgotten belongings to recover a hand mirror left by her late mother.1 • 2 It was produced by Fuji Television as a fiftieth-anniversary project, animated by Production I.G, and released by Toho in Japan on August 22, 2009.3 • 1

Key factDetail
Japanese releaseAugust 22, 2009, distributed by Toho; run time of 90 minutes1 • 4
Director and screenplayShinsuke Sato, co-writing with Hirotaka Adachi (the novelist also known as Otsuichi)1 • 5
ProductionFuji Television 50th-anniversary work; animation by Production I.G with cooperation from Polygon Pictures3 • 6
Main voice castHaruka Ayase (Haruka), Miyuki Sawashiro (Teo), Iemasa Kayumi (the Baron), Nao Omori (Haruka's father), Naho Toda (Haruka's mother), Mitsuki Tanimura (Miho), Tamaki Matsumoto (Cotton)2 • 7
MusicTadashi Ueda1
AwardsExcellent Animation Award at the 33rd Japan Academy Prize (2010); Nippon Cinema Award 2010 at the Nippon Connection festival4 • 2
SettingOblivion Island, a fairy-tale-like world whose inhabitants collect possessions humans have neglected and build their city from them7

Spoilers

Premise and story

The film's premise asks where childhood treasures go when their owners grow up and stop caring for them. Fantastic creatures cross from another dimension into the human world unseen, gather discarded and neglected objects, and use them to build their own city, Oblivion Island.7

Haruka, a sixteen-year-old high school student, prays at a shrine for the return of a hand mirror, a memento from her late mother that she once treasured and then lost. A mysterious fox-like creature appears, and following it she stumbles into Oblivion Island, a place humans are forbidden to enter. She enlists the creature, Teo, to help search for the mirror, believing it must be on the island.6

The search becomes complicated because the mirror is valuable on the island. All mirrors have magical properties there, and Haruka's is the most powerful, so the Baron, the island's ruler, wants it as much as she does.8 According to the SBS festival review, the mirror is said to have belonged to the Baron himself and was later stolen by brigands called Petitloss who live deep underground; the Baron rules from a Zeppelin with oars and dispatches a dragon and underlings to capture the human intruder.9 Haruka disguises herself with a mask, since humans are forbidden on the island, and is reunited with Cotton, a once-loved stuffed toy she had thrown away and who was hurt by the rejection.9

The story is framed by Haruka's strained relationship with her hard-working father, whom she resents after her mother's death; through the mirror's memories she sees the pain her father endured and his steadfast love for her.10 The film's premise draws on a legend attached to a real shrine in the Musashino area, and the opening animation describes fox spirits that take neglected possessions from their owners.3 • 5

Production

The project was announced in October 2008 as a partnership between Fuji TV and Production I.G, a fully computer-animated feature slated for summer 2009 and pitched as family entertainment in the manner of Pixar and DreamWorks.11 Producer Daisuke Sekiguchi originated the project and created proprietary software that turns two-dimensional hand-drawn animation into 3D animation while preserving the quirky details of traditional hand-drawn work.12 The design concept fixed the island's look as a world made of things stolen from human society.13

The schedule was tight. Cut production began around September 2008, about a year before the August 2009 release, and the team reduced an initial storyboard of nearly 2,000 cuts to a locked 1,433 cuts by the end of July. Because in-house staff were insufficient for a 90-minute full-CG feature, the production brought in outside studios and standardized on Autodesk Maya, which was widely available at partner companies.14 Work later moved to Polygon Pictures, which handled rendering and compositing for the final release.15

Recording combined prescoring and dubbing methods; Haruka Ayase, who voiced the heroine and shared her name, said she was involved from the early character-design stage, with animation matched to her own movements.3 • 16

Reception

Critical response was mixed to positive. On Rotten Tomatoes the film held a Tomatometer of 70% from two critic reviews, with the SBS review calling it "an animated Japanese Alice in Wonderland" and ScreenAnarchy's reviewer describing a "respectable and VERY spectacular matinee film for all the family, with lots of sauce but little meat" that treads ground similar to Studio Ghibli's The Cat Returns.5 Reviewers repeatedly compared it to Alice in Wonderland, Toy Story, Wall-E, and Spirited Away, generally judging it a solid but generic entry in the lost-and-forgotten-toys genre.9 • 17

The visual style drew both praise and criticism. The DVD Talk review called the design and art direction a "huge success, filled with gorgeous, candy-colored fantasy visuals" while finding the computer animation itself hampered by a limited budget and a "dead-eye" problem similar to motion capture.8 SciFiNow judged the blend of modern CGI with a traditional anime style effective for the island's grand backdrops but less successful for Haruka herself, who came across like a poorly rendered video game avatar.17 Several critics found Haruka underdeveloped, with DVD Talk calling her "the character version of a MacGuffin" whose desire for the mirror moves the plot but gives the audience little to invest in.8

The film won the Excellent Animation Award at the 33rd Japan Academy Prize in 2010 and the Nippon Cinema Award at the Nippon Connection festival in 2010.4 • 2 In North America it was released on home video by FUNimation in a Blu-ray/DVD combo in 2012, with an English cast including Christine Marie Cabanos as Haruka, Cassandra Lee Morris as Teo, and Patrick Seitz as the Baron.8 • 5 The Dove Foundation reviewed the home video release, noting fantasy-type violence including Cotton being ripped in two, and recommended it for ages twelve and over.10

References

  1. Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror, Production I.G Work List
  2. ホッタラケの島 春香と魔法の鏡, Nippon Connection film database
  3. ProductionI.G新作主演は『ホッタラケの島』, Animate Times (2009)
  4. ホッタラケの島　遥と魔法の鏡, 映画.com
  5. Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror (2009), Rotten Tomatoes
  6. ホッタラケの島 ～遥と魔法の鏡～, Fuji Television
  7. Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror, JustWatch
  8. Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror Blu-ray/DVD review, DVD Talk (2012)
  9. Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror Review, SBS What's On (2010)
  10. Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror, Dove Foundation review
  11. フジTV×I.G　フルCG劇場アニメ「ホッタラケの島」来夏公開, アニメ！アニメ！(2008)
  12. Production I.G. Producing CGI Feature, Anime News (2008)
  13. 次世代クリエイター's VOICE(2) 映画『ホッタラケの島』のCG監督・CG助監督が明かす、"CG制作現場の今", TECH+
  14. ホッタラケの島 production case study, Autodesk Area (PDF)
  15. Hottarake no Shima, Damien's Portfolio
  16. 『ホッタラケの島 遥と魔法の鏡』綾瀬はるか　単独インタビュー, Cinema Today (2009)
  17. Oblivion Island: Haruka And The Magic Mirror DVD review, SciFiNow

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

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