Review | Netflix movie review: My Oni Girl – Japanese fantasy anime by A Whisker Away co-director is frustratingly familiar
- A people-pleasing boy helps a mysterious girl from another realm find her mother, but they are pursued by a god who threatens to devour them
- My Oni Girl, while pleasing to look at, lacks the spark and inventiveness of a Studio Ghibli film – and plods towards a predictable and underwhelming climax
2/5 stars
Striving to be a people-pleaser can leave your own life empty and unsatisfied. This is the lesson learned by high-schooler Hiiragi in A Whisker Away co-director Tomotaka Shibayama’s new animated fantasy, My Oni Girl.
The second feature film produced by Studio Colorido exclusively for Netflix (after 2022’s Drifting Home), My Oni Girl follows the disenfranchised teenager as he is whisked off on a magical adventure by a mysterious girl from another realm.
Growing up in the mountainous countryside of Yamagata prefecture has become a solitary existence for Hiiragi (voiced by Kensho Ono).
Despite enjoying a relatively stable home life, his unquenchable desire to help other people, in the hopes that they will like him in return, has ironically seen him exploited by his classmates and left without anyone to call a real friend.
One day, on his way home from school, Hiiragi encounters a strange blue-haired girl in need of assistance and he cannot resist the opportunity to help.
