Film centers on 4-year-old boy who meets older version of younger sister from the future

Film distributor TOHO opened a website to unveil director Mamoru Hosoda 's latest film, which is now titled Mirai no Mirai (Mirai From the Future). (The film was previously titled simply as Mirai , although Studio Chizu filed a Mirai no Mirai trademark on October 24.) The film will open in Japan on July 20, after previously being announced with a May release date.

The tagline on the poster reads, "I met the future."

The film's story centers around a family living in a small house in an obscure corner of a certain city — in particular, the family's spoiled four-year-old boy Kun-chan. When Kun-chan gets a little sister named Mirai, he feels that his new sister stole his parents' love from him, and is overwhelmed by many experiences he undergoes for the first time in his life. In the midst of it all, he meets an older version of Mirai, who has come from the future.

The plot description differs from the description that entertainment news magazine Variety previously provided, but maintains the time travel element. Variety's previous description is as follows:

Mirai follows a 4-year old boy who is struggling to cope with the arrival of a little sister in the family, until things turn magical. A mysterious garden in the backyard of the boy's home becomes a gateway allowing the child to travel back in time and encounter his mother as a little girl and his great-grandfather as a young man. These fantasy-filled adventures allow the child to change his perspective and help him become the big brother he was meant to be.

Hosoda is directing the film at his Studio Chizu , and is also credited as scriptwriter and for the original story. Hiroyuki Aoyama – the animation director on earlier Hosoda films The Girl Who Leapt Through Time , Summer Wars , and The Boy and The Beast – and Ayako Hata – a key animator on the same films, are returning for this new film as animation directors. Yohei Takamatsu and Takashi Omori , who Hosoda had previously worked with on The Boy and The Beast , are also returning as art directors for the film. Producer Yuichiro Saito is also returning from Hosoda's earlier films.

Charades, a new international sales banner launched by Carole Baraton (formerly at Wild Bunch ), Yohann Comte, and Pierre Mazars (formerly at StudioCanal ), represented the film at the Cannes Film Festival earlier this year in May. Comte handled sales on Hosoda's previous film The Boy and The Beast when he was deputy head of sales at Gaumont .

In a interview with Variety in May, Hosoda discusses the themes of the new film. The new film's theme will be "siblings," continuing on from the themes of "youth" in The Girl Who Leapt Through Time , "family" in Summer Wars , "motherhood" in Wolf Children , and "fatherhood" in The Boy and The Beast .

Hosoda says that the new film is inspired by his own experience as a father, noting that "Mirai" (which can be translated as "future") is the name of both the sister character in the film, as well as his own daughter. He states that the conflict in the film echoes his real-life experience of his eldest child feeling that his new sibling "stole her parents, which made her ferociously jealous." He acknowledged that the new film is closer to the human drama of The Girl Who Leapt Through Time and Wolf Children than the action stories of Summer Wars and The Boy and The Beast .

Hosoda states that he wrote the screenplay alone, but listened to "opinions and the experiences of the producers."

Source: Comic Natalie