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.
The girl, named Tsumugi (voiced by Miyu Tomita), reveals that she is an oni, a magical creature, who has left her hidden village on the other side of the mountain to search for her mother.
Throwing caution to the wind, Hiiragi agrees to accompany Tsumugi to Hei Shrine, but he soon learns they are being pursued by a serpent-like Snow God, who threatens to devour them while also ushering in a wintry cold front, even in the midst of summer.
The scenic setting, accentuated by perpetual snowfall, provides an effortlessly picturesque backdrop, but Hiiragi and Tsumugi remain broadly-drawn archetypes, going through the motions of too familiar adolescent struggles that have been dramatised countless times before.
The various benevolent adults they meet along the way are instantly forgettable and somewhat interchangeable, while Shibayama struggles to conjure any real tension from the vaguely threatening otherworldly entities circling above.
Audiences watching on Netflix may well succumb to the temptation to scroll away before even reaching the end.
My Oni Girl will start streaming on Netflix on May 24.