Junior High (or Middle School) is Hell. I won’t deep dive into my experience because if you’re reading this review, I bet you have nightmare tales of what happened during your junior high years. It’s a time of serious transition as you go from elementary school to high school. The teenagers are getting hormonal. Kids who seemed nice in 5th grade are absolute monsters in 7th grade. Cliques build up quick. If you’re seen as a target, everyone wants to take a shot at you. Even worse is the realization that you’ll be stuck with these people for high school which means four years of enduring them. You wish you could transfer to another junior high school that far away. Except it turns out that even far away, the junior high experience sucks. Lonely Castle In the Mirror lets us know that Middle School in Japan also painful experience even if they force you to wear school uniforms.
Middle Schooler Kokoro (Ami Touma) stars middle school on a wrong note when the popular girl makes her a target. First she takes Kokoro’s new friend into her little circle. Then the evil girl goes after Kokoro for thinking she could date her “boyfriend.” The bullying gets turned to an extreme level when the mean girl and her trolls surround Kokora’s house and demand she come out. This leads to Kokoro having an emotional breakdown and being kept out of middle school. She stays in her bedroom a lot. One day, her mirror begins to glow. While normally a glowing mirror is a bad thing, this time Kokoro discovers a portal to a castle isolated in the middle of a sea. The place is run by The Wolf Queen (Mana Ashida). She’s a tough small girl that always wears a wolf mask. Kokoro also meets another six teenagers who stepped through their mirrors to this strange new world. The Wolf Queen informs them that they’ve been selected to look for a missing key. The person that finds the key will get a wish. After the wish is granted all the teenagers will forget about their time in the castle. The only rule is that they can’t be in the castle after 5 p.m. and before 9 a.m. If they break the rule, they will be eaten by wolves. Instead of tearing up the castle, the kids hang out there as if it is a clubhouse. They don’t seem to care about getting a wish or being eaten by wolves. They just like that being able to hang out with a group of kids who aren’t going to be horrific to them. Through their talks, the kids discover a lot of connections between themselves. Are they ever going to look for the key or do they want them memory of hanging out with their friends?
Lonely Castle in the Mirror is based on a novel by Mizuki Tsujimura. Director Keiichi Hara and screenwriter Miho Maruo who previously teamed up for The Wonderland and did a remarkable job adapting the film. While the movie is animated and has a fantastical/science fiction, the movie doesn’t over dazzle us with visuals. The focus is on the seven kids and their issues at school. There is a fascinating third act twist when they discover one of their common traits don’t exactly line up. Being the father of a teenager, there’s an authentic feel when the kids decide to not get excited about finding the key and just socialize. It’s almost like they’re inside a multi-player VR video game and are more enjoying the companionship than speed racing to the end. They aren’t inside a VR video game so I’m not giving a major plot twist. This feels a bit more truthful than Ready Player One. You do want to see what happens when the key is discovered, but you respect how these outcast kids are finding pals. Lonely Castle in the Mirror is a reflection of casualties of junior high.
The Video is 1.85:1 anamorphic. The video out the detail in the Wolf Queen’s mask. The Audio is DTS-HD MA 5.1 for both English and Japanese. Both tracks sound fine. The movie is subtitled in English and Spanish.
Art Gallery has 177 images from the production from character studies to the landscape art.
Trailers (4:10) includes the subtitled trailer and English dub trailer.
Shout! Factory and GKIDS presents Lonely Castle In the Mirror. Directed by Keiichi Hara. Screenplay by Miho Maruo. Starring Kumiko Asô, Ashley Boettcher, Francesca Calo, Natalie Chan, Giselle Fernandez, Shingo Fujimori, Zoe Glick & Cassie Glow. Running Time: 117 minutes. Rating: Not Rated. Release Date: September 26, 2023.
