Seven Days War (2021): Written by Ichiro Okouchi, directed by Takumi Kitamura. Starring: Takumi Kitamura, Kyoko Yoshine, Rie Miyazawa, Megumi Han, and Tatsuhisa Suzuki. Running Time: 88 minutes.
Rating: 2.5/4
I don't know when, exactly, it seemingly became law for anime movies to feature opening faux-credit montages set to a random Japanese pop song, but I can't say I'm a fan. It's part of an unfortunate trend I've noticed where anime movies seem to be trying to look and feel more and more like anime series. The insistance on some generic pop song about wind and waves and the yearnings of youth is a particular sore point for me, in no small part because they all sound exactly the same; for all his incredible talent, Makoto Shinkai falls into this trap a LOT, and it is often one of the few flaws in his films, even Your Name, which is otherwise pretty much perfect. Sadly, Seven Days War is another of these films that looks and feels like way too many other anime I've already seen, right down to the two pop-song-plus-wacky-antics montages that make it extremely confusing to grasp how, exactly, time is supposed to work within the context of the story.
Said story revolves around Mamoru, a teenage kid secretly in love with his lifelong neighbor, Aya, and utterly baffled as to why his classmates aren't as turned on as he is by fun facts about the Franco-Prussian War (to which I can VERY much relate). When he finds out that Aya is leaving and he is about to lose his shot with her forever, he very spontaneously suggests that they run away from home for a week to celebrate her birthday. To his pleasant surprise, she agrees. To his unpleasant surprise, she promptly asks her best friend to join them, who then proceeds to pull three other people into the plan as well.
What is the plan? To gather supplies and occupy a large, empty former mining facility up in the mountains, with a whole host of rusty, creaky machines and lifts and elevator shafts lying around that somehow still have electricity and are guaranteed definitely play a big role in how the second half of the film plays out. It's all fun and games for the first day (at least, I think it's a day; again, the montage makes this very unclear), until they discover they aren't the first ones there. There is a stowaway, of sorts, a Thai child named Mallet whose family had emigrated illegaly to Japan to find work but were recently separated.
And that's when the plot starts to really kick into high gear. Officials from...some department or other who are after the child appear. They are soon joined by the father of one of the schoolgirls in the factory, since he's apparently some sort of high-placed political personage terrified of a family scandal derailing his career. Who exactly he is and what sort of career he's obsessed with is unclear, but the film assures us that he is very, very important, so please be scared of him! They (read, the adults) surround the facility and try to figure out a way inside to remove the kids, while our leads try to come up with improvised ways of using the facility and its various bits of old-school machinery to keep them at bay. Yes, at this point the film fully enters Home Alone territory, but with even more potential for gruesome murder.
Soon, the events surrounding the factory become something of a media sensation, and a major plot device soon arises where internet chat boards begin combing the footage of the kids shown on the news to find out who they are. Predictably, all of the kids have some form of dirty laundry, in some cases directly concerning their relationships with each other, and these secrets are soon being trotted out online for all to see.
Aside from the fact that, once again, this is very much the sort of coming-of-age story we've gotten many times before, it's at this precise moment of emotional revelation where the film can't seem to get out of its own way. Some of the stuff that comes out is really heartbreaking and, for a moment, offer some real emotional catharsis that could have made us really get some depth out of characters whose presences up to that point were rather perfunctory. But, like with the pop song, there is such a rush to get to the next predictable set pieces that this part of the movie isn't allowed to breathe enough to leave an impact.
All that being said, even if some of the character developments and scenes of revelation towards the end are very predictable, the film's heart is in the right place, and the most important scene does hit when it needs to. Sadly, if anything ends up lost in the shuffle, it's the otherwise fairly original character of Mallet. An anime tackling migrant issues within Japan is extremely unusual, so this is where the film had the most potential to break away from the pack. However, the way in which this aspect of the story is resolved, plus the fact that Mallet remains, to the end, secondary to the rather boilerplate character of Mamoru, makes it feel less relevant to the movie than I wished it had been.
There are Easter eggs that connect the film to other adaptations of its source material, and there is nothing actively bad in the film; if you like this sort of anime, you will enjoy the film just fine. But it's not the sort of film that will convert anyone not already sold on anime, so sadly I can't say that I broadly recommend it. It's a fine watch on its own merits, but there are other, more original works out there that I would give your attention to first.
-Noah
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