YMMV / Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms

• Awesome Art:
  • Just look at the animation! It's simply sumptuous! And considering this is PA Work's first feature length animated film, that's saying something!
  • When it came time to hire a character designer, Mari Okada wanted to enlist Akihiko Yoshida (best known for his work on various Square Enix properties chock full of amazing art in their own right), as she was a fan of his work. His contributions to the film help elevate it to another level.
• Awesome Music: Veteran composer Kenji Kawai combines his signature ethereal oriental choir with warm woodwind instruments to great effect. Have a listen.
• Award Snub: A minor controversy erupted in 2019 when Maquia failed to net a single Annie Award nomination, despite receiving global acclaim. It also failed to secure a nomination for Best Animated Film at that year's Academy Awards, drawing even more ire from fans.
• Ensemble Dark Horse: Mido, for being a great mother to her sons and helping Maquia build a life in the village.
• Jerkass Woobie: Krim. He commits a number of increasingly dubious actions, culminating in trying to pull a murder-suicide with Lelia. But considering he wasn't much older than Maquia and lost his love, his home, and later his friends to Mezzarte while spending years fixated on getting Lelia back, it's easy to see why he crossed the Despair Event Horizon.
• Memetic Mutation: "Go Call Your Mom!"^note From a youtuber's review of the film. It encapsulates the feeling the film generates in most viewers
• Moral Event Horizon:
  • Krim, while sympathetic at the start, loses all of it when he kidnaps Maquia and later attempts to kill Leilia when she chooses her daughter over him.
  • The King of Mezzarte after what he did to Lelia and the Iorph in pursuit of power.
• They Wasted a Perfectly Good Plot: Some viewer felt the film should have been longer and focused on more world building especially with Mezzarte's rival kingdoms as they're not given much set-up.
• The Woobie: Pretty much everyone. Maquia, Krim, and Leilia all lose their families in the raid on their village and go through very harsh times just to be able to survive, but Leilia and Krim are pretty much broken.

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