Oblivion Island: A Fairy-Tale World That Stays With Me

This animated film came out back in ‘09, but I’m always a bit slow on these things. Yesterday I was browsing VeryCD looking for some movies to watch, saw this one in the animation section, and downloaded it to take a look~

Plot: Oblivion Island: Haruka and the Magic Mirror is about Haruka, an ordinary high school student who lost her mother when she was little and was raised by her father alone. The story begins at a shrine in Musashino. Haruka visits the shrine where she often played as a child, and by chance spots a fox secretly carrying off an old, discarded toy airplane. Following the fox, Haruka gets lost in the forest, and the fox vanishes. Suddenly she finds a puddle giving off a strange, magical aura. The moment she puts her hand in, she is pulled into a fantasy world: “Oblivion Island.” The little island is piled high with things humans have thrown away. Haruka meets the fox again. His name is Teo (voiced by Miyuki Sawashiro), and he lives on the island. Haruka is full of curiosity about this incredible world, and there she finds a little stuffed lamb she once treasured. Looking at the doll, she remembers the most important treasure of her childhood: “That’s right, when I was little, Mom gave me a hand mirror, but it went missing. Could it be here on this island?” Though Teo is extremely reluctant, he goes with Haruka to search for the lost mirror. But this is an island that humans are forbidden to enter. Haruka and Teo are careful not to be seen by the other residents, but the “Baron” still catches wind of them. Can Haruka find her hand mirror? And can she make it back to the real world?

How do I put it? Watching it really moved me. The stuffed animals and dolls I loved most, the comic books I read over and over, the colorful pebbles I picked up in the park…… where have all those once-treasured things gone? Did they slip away from you without you even noticing? This film is about the things so many people loved as kids being secretly gathered on an island nobody knows about. It says they’re “secretly” gathered there, but really, which of those things wasn’t forgotten or thrown away by people as they grew up? On “Oblivion Island,” where no humans live, the residents build their own streets out of humanity’s former “treasures.” It’s a world no one knows about, so what other wonders does this island hold? Over there, everything seems like a cartoon: no bloodshed, no war, just little scuffles and wave after wave of laughter. This animation is so warm and gentle. It all made me think back on the past. The drawings I loved have more or less all been tossed out by me, the toys I loved have vanished one by one, and the things I used to love slowly stopped interesting me. By the time I think of them again they’re gone, and only then do I realize how precious they were! We only learn to cherish things after we lose them. Only you know what’s worth cherishing to you, so go love and cherish it now! Go watch this film~ you’ll learn a lot~:)

PS: That little cotton ball is so cute~o(∩_∩)o