The 2018 anime film "Maquia - When the Promised Flower Blooms" is the directorial debut of Mari Okada. However, she already had an accomplished resume as a screenwriter for anime, with over 20 years of experience in the industry for series composition in dozens of shows. There's a high chance you are a fan on something she worked on. Okada gained particular recognition for "anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day," "Hanasaku Iroha" and the film "The Anthem of the Heart," as each of these seemed to take advantage of her strongest genre, that of complex emotions towards love, family and friendship. An autobiography would reveal a history between her and her mother that helps inform these stories. Essentially, she is a very good writer, partially because she takes advantage of emotionally charged scenes, but does so from a place of honesty.This pedigree already saw that Okada had a large existing fanbase by the time "Maquia" was announced. She both acted as director and script writer for the fantasy film. The script is strong, the directorial style is less so, but is able to blend well with the story and themes. It might be a bit too ambitious, for the film does a lot within its runtime and inevitably looses track of some story threads. But it is an impressive story nonetheless, grounded with themes of what it means to be a mother, a father, and a son.At the start, we are introduced to an elvish-looking clan called the Iorph in a medival fantasy setting, at a time when magic was commonplace, but slowly dying out and being forgotten as the human race prospered. This particular clan is seemingly immortal, able to retain their youth and live for many centuries, and are shunned as monsters for this fact. By choice, the clan lives secluded from the other races, weaving fine fabrics in a peaceful eutopia on the other side of the mountains. Maquia voices her loneliness to the elders: still relatively young, she envies the few among the Iorph that maintain a romance with each other. The elder warns her that she should never fall in love with anyone she meets outside the clan, otherwise she will know true and everlasting loneliness. Insert foreshadow music here.Fairly quickly, the Iorph town is attacked by human royal guards, riding in on dragons. They have come to take an Iorph woman by force: we later learn it is to attempt cross-breeding to spawn a magically powerful royal heir with the current prince of the city. The woman taken happens to be the carefree spirit in love with another Iorph, whom Maquia had so envied. After a tense action scene, Maquia is whisked away from her town as many of them are slaughtered and the paradise burned, left alone for the first time outside of her home in the middle of a forest. If that's not enough, she quickly comes across a crying baby in the arms of a dead mother, attacked by human bandits. Unable to leave it, Maquia takes the child, and struggles to be its mother across its lifetime while political turmoil envelopes the country.To say "Maquia" is an epic feels like an understatement. Medival fantasy has been portrayed in anime many times before, but typically looks like it derived from a standard archtype, matching what we think of when we think of video games like "Final Fantasy" or "Dragon Quest." The world of "Maquia" is a little more thought out, feeling like a grand setting while still feeling distinct and believable. The story is told is a interesting period for the setting, a time when dragons are going extinct and humans are struggling to retain their economic power in a shifting world. At first, it comes across as a bit too dense. Names, words and phrases are tossed quickly in the first several minutes, some of which will no doubt go over viewers' heads. And there are a lot of story threads, making it a bit difficult to keep track of things. The main story is of Maquia, at 15 years old, learning to be a mother to a human boy she names Ariel. Another thread is of her spirited Iorph friend being locked in a castle, treated as royalty in order to produce a child, but griving for being blocked from seeing said child, let alone her original love or friends, all presumed dead. Another story is of surviving Iorph, including the Romeo to the locked-away Iorph, plotting to steal away the princess from the kingdom. There's also the human family Maquia meets early on, agreeing to help her raise Ariel in his early years, and of Ariel eventually growing distant from Maquia and wanting to survive on his own. I'm certain I'm missing a few threads here. 
An early metaphor is the fine fabric the Iorph are known to weave, of distinct color and detail that the Iorph are able to communicate to each other through their work, the crossing threads often compared to the entangled stories and people that cross paths throughout their lives. It's a lovely idea, and "Maquia" almost suceeds fully in portraying these storylines. But a few events occur simply because they must, without appropriate logic to prepare them. Some events are skipped entirely for the sake of time. It feels like a director's cut, with 10 to 15 extra minutes to the existing 2-hour runtime, is necessary to fix a lot of these details. Or, more likely, Okada got carried away in her first big film as a director. There are several "false endings" in the final 15 minutes, further suggesting the production had trouble deciding what the keep and what to cut.But at its best, the story is powerful. Some scenes seem placed to explicitly force an emotional reaction from the audience, but I can't saw it doesn't work. One scene requires Maquia to litterally pry baby Ariel from her dead mother's hands, one finger at a time, with sounds of cracking bones due to rigor mortis. A later scene juxtaposes shots of a mother giving birth with the father charging into a bloody battle, both with music and framing that makes the viewer fear for their lives in the dramatic climax. Maquia's journey as a mother, from naive and lost to a strong figure (if only strong for the sake of Ariel), is already a dramatic framing device, given that Maquia will barely age as Ariel grows up, concluding with the rare occurance of a man able to die of old age with his mother by his side. I didn't cry as much as I thought I would, but practically bawled by the end credits. "Maquia" makes for a great companion piece with Mamoru Hosoda's "Wolf Children," and even while it isn't quite as good, it still makes a case for how important, difficult and emotional it is to be a mother. The fantasy backdrop might actually make "Maquia" more watchable to some audiences.The fantasy art and character designs were provided by Akihiko Yoshida, a frequent collaborator and designer for more certain "Final Fantasy" games. At first, I was concerned: to make the Iorph appear eternally youthful, their faces lean heavily towards a "moe" style, like blobby marshmellows prone to excessive crying, propped on slender figures with tiny hands and feet. I actually quite like Yoshida's style, but it doesn't seem to carry over well to animation, at least for the Iorph. Generally, the character designs are good more often than not, and the backgrounds are beautifully detailed in city settings, like a piece of fantasy concept art. The animation holds well, especially during scenes of action or intense drama, and I was impressed with the restrained use of 3D CGI, only being used when necessary and done so with care to avoid distracting the audience. But during normal scenes, the studio doesn't seem to know exactly what to do with the animation, and it results in a lot of scenes of little to no movement, barely a cut above the television output P.A. Works usually produces. The music was provided by Kenji Kawai, best known for his work on "Ghost in the Shell" and with a resume that surpasses even Okada's. It can be a little overbearing, sometimes distracting from the visuals, but is appropriatlely epic and beautiful, giving "Maquia" a lot of its tone and style. And there is a lot of tense moments, both in context and in violence or subject matter: I would not recommend this to young kids, but older teenagers with their parents would be gripped by the experience.I very much look forward to what Mari Okada directs next. While "Maquia - When The Promised Flower Blooms" isn't a perfect movie, it is a wholy original one, and an incredible first outting. It is as if the careers of everyone involved were leading to this moment, a interconnecting crossing of thread, where they are each likely to branch out again to even better prospects. The future is bright for all of them, and to us, their audience.