Review: Studio Ponoc’s New ‘The Imaginary’ is Darkly Fantastical

Studio Ponoc, known as the “Ghibli Successor,” is finally back with a new animated film. Can The Imaginary live up to its pedigree?

In 2014, Japanese animation titan Studio Ghibli shut down its production team. Within a year, some of the studio’s bigger names had regrouped, and a successor animation team came into being: Studio Ponoc.

Taking the Serbo-Croatian world for “midnight” as their moniker, Ponoc strove to fill the gap left behind by the shutter of the studio that directors Miyazaki and Takahata built. In 2017, they released their first feature film, the Ghibli-reminiscent Mary and the Witch’s Flower. A mild box office and critical success, it would also be Ponoc’s only full-length film for six years.

That is, until today, and the release of Momose Yoshiyuki’s The Imaginary.

It’s an ambiguous time to be a Ghibli successor; after all, Ghibli isn’t shuttered anymore. The Studio returned in 2020 with the much-reviled CG-animated TV film Earwig and the Witch. (There happens to be a witchy through-line at both studios, starting with 1989’s Kiki’s Delivery Service.) More importantly, Ghibli just released its first theatrical film in a decade, and by globally beloved director Miyazaki Hayao, no less. With The Boy and Heron having just become the first-ever…