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Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms[3] (Japanese: さよならの朝に約束の花をかざろう, Hepburn: Sayonara no Asa ni Yakusoku no Hana o Kazarō, lit. "Let's Hold the Promised Flowers in the Morning of Farewells"), officially abbreviated as Sayoasa (さよ朝),[4] is a 2018 Japanese animated high fantasy drama film written and directed by Mari Okada and produced by P.A. Works.[1][5] It features animation direction and character designs by Yuriko Ishii adapted from Akihiko Yoshida's original designs, and music composed by Kenji Kawai.[1]

Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms
Japanese theatrical release poster
Japanese	さよならの朝に約束の花をかざろう
Hepburn	Sayonara no Asa ni Yakusoku no Hana o Kazarō
Literally	Let's Hold the Promised Flowers in the Morning of Farewells
Directed by	Mari Okada
Written by	Mari Okada
Produced by	Naoko Endō Tomomi Kyōtani Nobuhiro Takenaka Takahiro Kikuchi
Starring	Manaka Iwami Miyu Irino
Cinematography	Satoshi Namiki
Edited by	Ayumu Takahashi
Music by	Kenji Kawai
Production company	P.A. Works
Distributed by	Showgate
Release date	February 24, 2018 (2018-02-24)
Running time	115 minutes
Country	Japan
Language	Japanese[1]
Box office	$4.3 million[2]

Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms tells the story of the titular Maquia, a young girl who is a member of a special race called the Iorph, mystical beings who can live for hundreds of years. While escaping war, she finds a lone surviving infant and decides to raise him as her son.

The film is Okada's directorial debut and the first standalone feature-length, theatrically-released production of P.A. Works.[4] It premiered in Japan by Showgate on February 24, 2018, and at the Glasgow Film Festival on March 4, 2018.[6] It was released by Madman Entertainment on June 7, 2018.[7] It was released by Anime Limited on June 27, 2018.[8] It was released by Eleven Arts on July 20, 2018.[9][10] The film's English dub premiered on September 21, 2018, in the United States.[11] It was released on DVD and Blu-ray Disc in Northern America on February 5, 2019. The DVD has only an English track, while the BD has both English and Japanese tracks.[12]

Plot

The Iorph, a humanoid race, live far removed from the world of humans, spending their days weaving Hibiol, a special cloth which serves as a written chronicle of the passing of time. They age much slower than humans, and can live for hundreds of years. They are legendary to outsiders, who have dubbed them the "Clan of the Separated".

Maquia, a young, orphaned Iorph girl, serves as an assistant to the clan's chief, Racine, who warns her about creating emotional attachments to outsiders, saying that Maquia will know what true loneliness is if she does. Soon afterward, the neighboring kingdom of Mezarte sends armed soldiers on the backs of flying dragons called Renato to the Iorph village. Unable to find the secret to their longevity, the army attacks, killing most of the Iorph and kidnapping Leilia, Maquia's friend. One of the Renato succumbs to the "Red Eye" disease and goes berserk during the attack. It becomes tangled in Hibiol, and flees the village, inadvertently carrying Maquia, who is tangled in the fabric. The Renato later crashes and dies in a forest. Maquia wakes up and meets an alcoholic merchant at the ambushed caravan, where she finds a newborn baby boy, held tightly in the arms of his deceased mother. Refusing to let him die, she pulls the baby from the woman's arms and takes him in as her son. She travels to the village of Helm, where a woman, Mido, takes them in, raising them alongside her two sons, Lang and Deol. Maquia names her adopted son Ariel.

Time passes and Ariel has grown into a child. The Kingdom of Mezarte had once built their strength and reputation on their ownership of the ancient Renato, but the Renato have started to succumb to the "Red Eye" disease, leaving them with less than ten as they begin to die out. Fearing the inevitable loss of power and influence, the king of Mezarte tries to claim ownership of another ancient and legendary power, the Iorph's longevity, leading him to attempt to introduce Iorph blood into the royal bloodline. Through a message woven into a Hibiol Maquia finds in a shop, she discovers that Leilia has been forced into an arranged marriage with the prince of Mezarte. She travels on a ship with Ariel to try to free Leilia. On the ship, she meets Krim, an Iorph. He is a friend of hers from their homeland, who was Leilia's former boyfriend and Maquia's secret crush. Krim is also seeking to free Leilia. Once in the capital of Mezarte, the two meet with a number of other Iorph, and unsuccessfully ambush a royal parade. Maquia briefly frees Leilia, but learns that Leilia is pregnant with the prince's child. Maquia flees on Leilia's orders and avoids capture with the help of the merchant, revealed to be half-Iorph. Krim, undeterred, resolves to continue trying to free Leilia, and leaves Maquia and Ariel behind.

As more time passes, Maquia and Ariel move to the iron-forge city of Dorail, where Maquia works as a restaurant waitress. Ariel grows to be a teenage forge worker. He becomes alienated from Maquia by the ever-decreasing difference in their apparent ages. Meanwhile, Leilia, still in the palace, is a prisoner of the royals. She has been cast aside because her daughter Medmel shows no signs of being an Iorph. She has not been able to meet Medmel ever since her birth, leaving her in despair. One day, Ariel and Maquia happen to meet Lang, now a soldier in Mezarte's army. Their meeting pushes Ariel and Maquia farther apart, allowing Ariel to join the army of Mezarte. Moments after he leaves, Maquia is kidnapped by Krim.

Approximately ten years later, Ariel has returned to the capital and married Dita, a girl he knew in Helm. She is pregnant with their first child. Meanwhile, Krim has gathered the support of the surrounding nations to invade and overthrow Mezarte. He takes a still-captive Maquia with him, trying to reach the palace in the battle. They are separated in a forest outside the capital, and after a brief encounter with Ariel, Maquia goes to the town and finds Dita in labor. She helps deliver the baby, while Ariel continues to fight and is wounded in the battle. Maquia finds Ariel and they share a heartfelt conversation before she offers him an emotional goodbye, and then she heads to the palace. Elsewhere, after finally finding Leilia in the palace and being rejected in favor of Medmel, Krim tries to kill both her and himself, but Krim is ambushed and killed by the chief of the guards. As the battle ends with Mezarte's loss, Ariel returns home and meets his newborn daughter. Maquia takes the last living Renato and flies away with Leilia, who manages to reunite briefly with Medmel before departing.

Many years later, Maquia returns to the village of Helm once again with the half-Iorph merchant, finding Ariel as an old man on his deathbed, and holds his hand as he dies. Leaving their home, she shoulders the pain of her loss, crying as she remembers the moments of her life she spent with him. Maquia rejoins the merchant and continues on the road, remarking to herself, despite the profound pain of loss, that loving her son brought her happiness.

A post-credit image shows the Iorph village being reinhabited once again by the surviving Iorph and their descendants, along with the last Renato.[13]

Voice cast

Character	Japanese	English[11]
Maquia[14]	Manaka Iwami	Xanthe Huynh
Ariel[14]	Miyu Irino Yuki Sakurai (childhood) Taichi Iwakawa (baby)	Eddy Lee Ryan Shanahan (teen) Barnaby Lafayette (child)
Leilia[14]	Ai Kayano	Cherami Leigh
Krim[14]	Yūki Kaji	Kevin T. Collins
Racine[14]	Miyuki Sawashiro	Lipica Shah
Lang[15]	Yoshimasa Hosoya Xu Bin (young)	Michael Schneider Spencer Rosen (young)
Mido[15]	Rina Satō	Allegra Clark
Tita (Dita)[11][15]	Yōko Hikasa Yuki Kurimoto (young)	Ryan Bartley Catie Harvey (young)
Medmel[15]	Misaki Kuno	Brooklyn Nelson Courtney Chu (young)
Izor[15]	Tomokazu Sugita	Marc Thompson
Darel[15]	Shunsuke Sakuya	H.D. Quinn
Deol[15]	Junnosuke Shishido	Micah Gursoy
Barrou	Hiroaki Hirata[1]	Daniel J. Edwards

Music

The film's score was composed and arranged by Kenji Kawai.[1] The film's ending song, "Viator (ウィアートル)", was composed, arranged and performed by Rionos, with lyrics provided by Riya. The soundtrack was released by Bandai Visual on February 24, 2018.

Reception

Box office

The film grossed $160,988 in North America in November 2018.[17] It grossed $4.3 million worldwide, including $1.2 million in Japan and $2.5 million in China in March 2019.[2]

Critical response

Makoto Shinkai called Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms a "fantastic film that can shake up memories within you that you normally forget."[18]

The film received 100% rating based on 27 reviews, with an average rating of 7.8/10 on Rotten Tomatoes. It said, "Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms anchors its colorfully imaginative fantasy setting in universal — and deeply poignant — real-world themes."[19] Metacritic reports a weighted average score of 72 out of 100 based on eight critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews".[20]

Miranda Sanchez, for IGN, gave the film a 8.5 out of 10 and wrote that it was "a beautiful story about motherhood, aging, and loss".[21]

Accolades

List of awards and nominations

Year	Award	Category	Recipient(s)	Result	Ref.
2018	12th Asia Pacific Screen Awards	Best Animated Feature Film	Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms	Nominated	[22]
	21st Shanghai International Film Festival	Best Animation	Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms	Won	[23]
	22nd Bucheon International Fantastic Film Festival	BIFAN Children's Jury Award	Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms	Won	[24]
	51st Sitges Catalonia International Fantastic Film Festival	Fantastic Discovery Category Best Feature Film	Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms	Won	[25]
	5th Anime Trending Awards	Anime Movie of the Year	Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms	Won	[26]

References

External links

• Official website (in Japanese)
• Official website
• Australia and New Zealand official website
• United Kingdom and Ireland official website
• United States and Canada official website
• Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms at IMDb 
• Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms at AllMovie

На других языках

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- [en] Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms

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[ru] Укрась прощальное утро цветами обещания

Укрась прощальное утро цветами обещания (яп. さよならの朝に約束の花をかざろう Саёнара но Аса ни Якусоку но Хана о Кадзаро:, букв.«Позволь украсить утро прощания обещанными цветами») — полнометражный аниме-фильм Мари Окады, для которой проект является дебютом в качестве режиссёра. Над дизайном персонажей работал Акихико Ёсида, композитором фильма стал Кэндзи Каваи, производством же занималась студия P.A. Works. Премьера фильма в Японии состоялась 24 февраля 2018 года[3], в России — 19 апреля[2].

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