A masterful creation of what is a mother's love. This movie carries action and drama from the viewpoints of struggling people. Time flies by quickly in the plot, but the ends justifies everything, so on that note, yes, it has a complete ending that fullfills satisfaction. Definitely a good classic or child-memory lane movie to watch. Good artwork and music, with only one bad CGI (within anime?) scene. Now to the negatives, which should not be a deterrent to watching, but understand why it's not the best: 1. Theme of the movie is motherhood, but what you ended up with is teen pregnancy... yeah. What some people strongly feel is not empathy but pity. 2. A lot of character brush-offs. Each character development is very limited, scenes are spread to multiple characters, meaning there is no main character focus on. 3. Lots of unknown background. The story has a strong history, which is the action and adventure side, but what the movie focused on is the side-story of Maquila. 4. Action and drama not a good mix. Action fans want a little drama, but drama fans won't appreciate action... wierd huh? Final note: 7/10 - it's like a Shakespeare's play/book. You "can" or "have to" emphasize on each and every action in order to enjoy the work... like a painted art. If you watch it, you didn't waste your time. If you didn't watch it, you're not missing out on anything.

I saw this movie during its limited theatre release in Australia. Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms is the directorial debut by Mari Okada. She also wrote the film. The writing, voice acting and animation is great. The main characters Maquia and Erial are realistic and convey the relationships between Children and their parents. The film also explores themes of motherhood. The film however is dragged down by some of the side characters and several flashback scenes which I thought were unnecessary. Overall I thought this was a great movie and it was only held back by some minor flaws.

A-plot 10/10, B-plot 10/10, Characterization 10/10, Pacing 7/10, World Building 7/10, Voice Acting 9/10, Soundtrack 8/10, Animation 10/10, Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms is one of the best anime films to release in the last few years. Almost everything about this film is perfect, from the well defined characters and the compelling plot to the beautiful animation and soundtrack. The only problems I had with this film are for things that didn't really matter like the minimal world building and a few unnecessary characters. Although one real problem I think the film had was the pacing especially in the first half. There are several time jumps in the film which skips over quite a bit of time and several moments that are hinted at but skipped over that I would have liked to have seen and I think would have made the ending more impactful. Because of this I think this story would have also worked really well as a 8-12 episode series. Despite these problems, the plot and characters were more than enough to keep me invested. I highly recommend you take any opportunity you have to check out this film.