is a 2017 Japanese animated

fantasy film Fantasy films are films that belong to the fantasy genre with fantastic themes, usually magic, supernatural events, mythology, folklore, or exotic fantasy worlds. The genre is considered a form of speculative fiction alongside science fiction ...

produced by Science Saru and released by

Toho is a Japanese film, theatre production and distribution company. It has its headquarters in Chiyoda, Tokyo, and is one of the core companies of the Osaka-based Hankyu Hanshin Toho Group. Outside of Japan, it is best known as the producer ...

about the eponymous ningyo. It was directed by Masaaki Yuasa, and written by Yuasa and

Reiko Yoshida is a Japanese screenwriter. She has written and supervised numerous screenplays for anime series, live-action dramas and films. Her major works include ''Kaleido Star'', ''Aria'', ''Maria-sama ga Miteru'', '' D.Gray-man'', ''K-On!'', ''Bakuman' ...

. The music was composed by Takatsugu Muramatsu. It is the second Science Saru film, though it was the first to be produced. The film was released in Japan on May 19, 2017, It was also released by Anime Limited on December 6, 2017, and by

GKIDS GKIDS is an American film distributor based in New York with, according to the ''Los Angeles Times'', a focus on "sophisticated, indie" animation. GKIDS releases critically acclaimed, mostly hand-drawn, international films—such as the works o ...

on May 11, 2018. Half Symbolic Films released the film on January 31, 2019.

Plot

is a lonely and pessimistic

middle school A middle school (also known as intermediate school, junior high school, junior secondary school, or lower secondary school) is an educational stage which exists in some countries, providing education between primary school and secondary school. ...

student living in with his grandfather, an

umbrella An umbrella or parasol is a folding canopy supported by wooden or metal ribs that is usually mounted on a wooden, metal, or plastic pole. It is designed to protect a person against rain or sunlight. The term ''umbrella'' is traditionally use ...

maker, and father. His rock band, "SEIRÈN", was formed by his friends, and . One day, Kai explores and meets , the ningyo girl. The

music beat In music and music theory, the beat is the basic unit of time, the pulse (regularly repeating event), of the ''mensural level'' (or ''beat level''). The beat is often defined as the rhythm listeners would tap their toes to when listening to a pi ...

allows her

fish fin Fins are distinctive anatomical features composed of bony spines or rays protruding from the body of a fish. They are covered with skin and joined together either in a webbed fashion, as seen in most bony fish, or similar to a flipper, as see ...

to transform into a pair of

human leg The human leg, in the general word sense, is the entire lower limb of the human body, including the foot, thigh or sometimes even the hip or gluteal region. However, the definition in human anatomy refers only to the section of the lower limb ...

s. The two strike up a friendship, and Kai takes Lu around the town for a tour. Kai learns that Lu cannot touch sunlight or she will burst into flames. He also learned that Lu has a papa and her mother was killed by a ship. Kai introduces Lu to Yuho and Kuino. When Kai accidentally reveals the secret of the merfolk to the townspeople, Lu's love and power of music makes them

dance Dance is a performing art form consisting of sequences of movement, either improvised or purposefully selected. This movement has aesthetic and often symbolic value. Dance can be categorized and described by its choreography, by its repertoire ...

around town. Despite Kai's selfishness, videos of Lu go viral and she becomes a celebrity. Inspired by her popularity, Yūho's grandfather reopens an old merfolk-themed amusement park on an island near the town. Kai becomes disinterested in the band and begins to ignore Lu. SEIRÈN plays the park's opening, but after Lu arrives and steals the show, Yūho becomes upset and runs away. Meanwhile, anti-merfolk feelings have been rising in the town, and when Yūho cannot be found by her father, he puts the blame on Lu and captures her. As he threatens her with sunlight, Lu's father comes to save her, which triggers a curse that begins to flood the town. Kai and Yūho help Lu and her father escape, who in turn rally other merfolk to help the town escape the rising waters. In the process of helping, the merfolk destroy the natural cliff which shades the bay from the sun, exposing themselves as the dawn breaks. As the threat of the curse disperses, the townspeople gather themselves and use many umbrellas to save all sea creatures from the sun. Kai apologizes to Lu and everyone dances happily until all sea creatures return to the

ocean The ocean (also the sea or the world ocean) is the body of salt water that covers approximately 70.8% of the surface of Earth and contains 97% of Earth's water. An ocean can also refer to any of the large bodies of water into which the wor ...

. Kai starts a new life in town.

Voice cast

Production

Yuasa announced on his

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that he was working on the film in January 2017. It was animated in a hybrid form in which

key frame In animation and filmmaking, a key frame (or keyframe) is a drawing or shot that defines the starting and ending points of a smooth transition. These are called ''frames'' because their position in time is measured in frames on a strip of fi ...

s were drawn on paper, but instead of the traditional

clean-up Cleanup, clean up or clean-up may refer to: * Cleanup (animation), a stage of animation workflow * Clean-up (environment), environmental action to remove litter from a place * Cleanup hitter, a baseball position * Clean-up Records, a record lab ...

and

inbetweening Inbetweening, also known as tweening, is a process in animation that involves creating intermediate frames, called inbetweens, between two keyframes. The intended result is to create the illusion of movement by smoothly transitioning one image in ...

still used in most Japanese

traditional animation Traditional animation (or classical animation, cel animation, or hand-drawn animation) is an animation technique in which each frame is drawn by hand. The technique was the dominant form of animation in cinema until computer animation. Proc ...

at the time, these rough key frames were then traced and inbetweened in

Adobe Flash Adobe Flash (formerly Macromedia Flash and FutureSplash) is a multimedia software platform used for production of animations, rich web applications, desktop applications, mobile apps, mobile games, and embedded web browser video players. Flash ...

. Yuasa acknowledged that ''Lu'' shares some similar plot elements and the visual subject of water with

Hayao Miyazaki is a Japanese animator, director, producer, screenwriter, author, and manga artist. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he has attained international acclaim as a masterful storyteller and creator of Japanese animated feature films, and is widel ...

's film ''

Ponyo is a 2008 Japanese animated fantasy film written and directed by Hayao Miyazaki, animated by Studio Ghibli for the Nippon Television Network, Dentsu, Hakuhodo DY Media Partners, Buena Vista Home Entertainment, Mitsubishi, and distribute ...

'', and that it occurred to him late into the production of ''Lu''. He considers this due to the influence on him of Miyazaki and

Isao Takahata was a Japanese director, screenwriter and producer. A co-founder of Studio Ghibli, he earned international critical acclaim for his work as a director of Japanese animated feature films. Born in Ujiyamada, Mie Prefecture, Takahata joined Toe ...

's '' Panda! Go, Panda!: Rainy-day Circus'', which Miyazaki reused elements of himself in ''Ponyo'', and is happy for his works to include such homages to works he admires. Kazuyoshi Saito's 1997 song was chosen to be the theme song of the film.

Reception

Critical reception

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Rotten Tomatoes Rotten Tomatoes is an American review-aggregation website for film and television. The company was launched in August 1998 by three undergraduate students at the University of California, Berkeley: Senh Duong, Patrick Y. Lee, and Stephen Wan ...

, the film holds a 78% approval rating based on 45 reviews, with an average rating of 6.4/10. The website's critics consensus reads, "''Lu Over the Wall'' can be more fun to watch than to follow, but director Masaaki Yuasa's distinctive visual style offers colorful compensation for an occasionally scattered story."

Metacritic Metacritic is a website that aggregates reviews of films, TV shows, music albums, video games and formerly, books. For each product, the scores from each review are averaged (a weighted average). Metacritic was created by Jason Dietz, Marc ...

, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 62 out of 100 based on 14 critics, indicating "generally favorable reviews". Charles Solomon from

Los Angeles Times The ''Los Angeles Times'' (abbreviated as ''LA Times'') is a daily newspaper that started publishing in Los Angeles in 1881. Based in the LA-adjacent suburb of El Segundo since 2018, it is the sixth-largest newspaper by circulation in the ...

wrote, "Yuasa's bold imagery and sometimes convoluted storytelling defy the conventions of traditional animated filmmaking, but he is clearly an artist with an individual vision whose work offers something genuinely new and eye-catching." On the other hand, Simon Abrams from RogerEbert.com said "Still, I can't lie: I was bored throughout the 112 minutes I spent watching ''Lu over the Wall''. I initially thought that I was allergic to the mediocre English voice actors' performances. But I soon realized that that my biggest problem was that I couldn't reconcile the basic disconnect between the thrilling story-telling and the paint-by-numbers story. I wanted the film's creators to do something with their formulaic narrative, but they never did."

Box office

''Lu over the Wall'' grossed $161,253 at the box office.

Accolades

References

External links

* * * * * * {{Japan Media Arts Festival for Animation of the Year 2010s disaster films 2017 fantasy films 2010s supernatural films 2010s teen fantasy films 2017 anime films Annecy Cristal for a Feature Film winners Dance in anime and manga Electronic music films Films about mermaids Films based on Japanese myths and legends Films set in Japan Flash animated films Flood films Japanese animated fantasy films Japanese disaster films Japanese mythology in anime and manga Japanese rock music films Japanese supernatural films Japanese teen films 2010s Japanese-language films Music in anime and manga Noitamina Science Saru Supernatural anime and manga Toho animated films Yōkai in anime and manga