If it’s late August/early September, then it must be time for the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth to break out the anime, and since their current blockbuster art exhibit is for a Japanese artist, that’s all the more reason. This year’s Anime at the Modern festival features one movie by Hayao Miyazaki (his 2004 fable, Howl’s Moving Castle), but most of their films this year are of quite recent vintage.
Among those would be Lu Over the Wall, a musical about a mermaid that was in our multiplexes just this past spring and which we described as a weirder, kid-friendlier version of The Shape of Water. Masaaki Yuasa’s film opens the weekend, while closing it is Mary and the Witch’s Flower, a film by Hiromasa Yonebayashi that came out in January and plays like a female version of the Harry Potter saga. Makoto Shinkai’s Your Name (which was in theaters last year) presents a story of a teenage boy and girl switching bodies at night, and Sunao Katabuchi’s terribly underappreciated In This Corner of the World tells the story of a young woman who goes to live a few miles outside of Hiroshima before the outbreak of World War II. Last fall’s Napping Princess (also called Ancien and the Magic Tablet) takes place in 2020, as a girl’s dreams and reality start to mirror each other in the run-up to the Summer Olympics in Tokyo. This generation coming after the giants of Miyazaki and the late Isao Takahata look primed to carry on Japan’s great animation tradition.
Anime at the Modern runs Fri-Sun at the Modern Art Museum of Fort Worth, 3200 Darnell St, FW. Tickets are $5-10. Call 817-738-9215.
