Aya and the Witch – Âya to majo (2020)

Directed by: Gorô Miyazaki | 83 minutes | animation, adventure | Original voice cast: Shinobu Terajima, Etsushi Toyokawa, Kokoro Hirasawa, Sherina Munaf, Gaku Hamada

The proverb of the apple and the trunk. Inevitably you have to think of this with every new Gorô Miyazaki film. As the son of Japanese animation hero Hayao Miyazaki, Gorô has followed in his father’s footsteps. In addition, my son is much less productive and his films differ considerably from his father’s work. Yet there are also parallels. For example, Gorô’s animated film ‘Aya and the Witch’ is an adaptation of a children’s book by British author Diana Wynne Jones. An earlier children’s book by her was made into a film in 2004 under the title ‘Howl’s Moving Castle’. Director on duty? Correct!

In ‘Aya and the Witch’ the baby witch Earwig is dropped by her mother witch at an English orphanage. Earwig, sporting a gorgeous hairdo with quirky horns, has the talent to always get her way, from anyone. That changes when a special couple visits the orphanage that Earwig adopts. The couple consists of the witch Bella Yaga and her bizarre husband the Mandrake. From one day to the next, Earwig’s existence changes from a life of lice to the life of a modern day Cinderella. What to do then?

Despite witches, talking cats, flying demons (which are harmless and not scary), the atmosphere in ‘Aya and the Witch’ is not very fairytale-like. The film is mostly very British, with its orphanage, its English streets and its old-fashioned English symphonic rock. Earwig’s mother was a guitarist in a symphonic band and Bella and the Mandrake are also musically active.

In ‘Aya and the Witch’ the individual scenes are more important than the story. We see a lot of potions going on, there are some funny scenes with the bizarre Mandrake, and there are quite a lot of scenes with the talking cat. And as this (relatively) short film goes on, we see how Earwig is increasingly adapting to this maladjusted family.
The result is a child-friendly film that does not excel at anything, but is also not annoying to watch. With a cheerful heroine, a helpful cat and a strange Mandrake, you actually have enough fun elements to happily sit through the film. Father Miyazaki’s work is slowly disappearing from view, but with ‘Aya and the Witch’ Gorô can just stand on his own two feet.