History Anime / MaquiaWhenThePromisedFlowerBlooms

** People changes with time, both physically and mentally. And it's important to acknowledge this fact and move on.

The above was told by clan elder Rachine to the lonely Maquia, a 15-year-old girl born to the Iorph tribe, those who while away their days weaving their reclusive near-eternal life into Hibiol fabric. But that very night, troopers from [[TheEmpire Mezarte Empire]] attack the village with their legendary Renato dragons, seeking the way to attain immortality. Maquia is separated from her home, her one-sided love Krim and her friend Leillia among many others, before finding an infant boy who lost his parents in a nearby forest. Overcome by her loneliness, she chooses to adopt Erial as her son, setting off a generation-spanning saga between a girl who never ages and a boy who will continually grow up; a story that teaches what relationship means in a world where nothing lasts forever.

* AlwaysAChildToParent: What the teenage Erial thinks of Maquia's treatment.

* BabysFirstWords: Maquia is overjoyed when Erial says "mama" for the first time.
* BayonetYa: The FinalBattle is fought with bayonets. [[spoiler:One [[DisneyDeath supposedly]] kills Erial.]]

* BirthDeathJuxtaposition: While Dita gives birth to their child, Erial [[spoiler:[[DisneyDeath supposedly]] dies in battle]].
* BittersweetEnding: The film does not play nice with its casts' lives. [[spoiler:Krim is killed, dying cold and alone unable to attain the love of his life. Leillia is finally set free, but at the cost of terrible lifelong trauma and leaving behind her daughter who barely got to see her even for just a passing moment. Maquia herself is faced with the inevitability of losing Erial and non-Iorphs she came to care for all in her lifetime]]. But on the other hand, [[spoiler:the oppressive Mezarte eventually loses its power against neighboring nations, Iorph clan members eventually return to their home and rebuild their lives together, Erial goes on to have a proper family of his own and Barlow assures Maquia that partings aren't all that bad, implying that there's much more to look forward to in the future]].
* {{Bookends}}: Maquia's first meeting with Erial was when the latter was a newborn infant, holding on to her hand. [[spoiler:By the end of the movie, Maquia's last meeting with Erial is when the latter is now an aged man, holding on to her hand as he passes away]].

* ChildhoodFriendRomance: Knowing that Dita [[spoiler:once teased Erial back in childhood and never got the chance to apologize for it]], the last thing anybody expected is [[spoiler: Erial coming back to settle down and start a family with her]].
* CloseToHome: When Anora dies, Mido reminds her kids that a dog's life is shorter than a human's which makes Maquia tear up and run away because she is reminded of [[MayflyDecemberFriendship how she will have to outlive Erial and the rest of her new-found family]].
* ComingOfAgeStory: One for both Maquia the parent and Erial the child.

* DeclarationOfProtection: Erial repeatedly promises to protect Maquia. After the FinalBattle, she notes that he succeeded.

** [[spoiler:Lang]], who was rejected by [[spoiler:Maquia]] when he suggested living together. However, [[spoiler:Lang]] remains supportive to [[spoiler:Maquia and by extension Erial]] [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy for the rest of his life]].

* DistantFinale: The film ends with [[spoiler:Maquia visiting the now utterly old Erial (who went on to have a granddaughter) on what is possibly his deathbed for the last time]].

* EarnYourHappyEnding: And boy did Maquia and Erial fight for it.
* EmpathicEnvironment: It starts raining when little Erial runs away from home and Maquia is looking for him in the city.

** The random wanderer Maquia meets right after finding Erial has suspiciously detailed knowledge of the Iorph, even knowing her name and recognizing her as someone close to the tribe's elder. He shows up again later and reveals that [[spoiler:he's half-Iorph, and is heavily implied but not outright stated to be The Elder's son by a human man]].
** Krim reacts negatively to Erial calling Maquia his mother, and much later insists on cutting Maquia's Rapunzel Hair due to the fact that female Iorph are not supposed to let their hair grow beyond a certain length unless they have had a child. His denial of mother-child bonds doesn't work well for his plan to save Leillia near the end of the movie.

* FriendlyTickleTorture: Maquia likes to do this with Erial when he was little.
* GenerationalSaga: The film has a shade of this, as it follows Maquia and Erial through the stages of life.

** A variant of this occurred near halfway point when [[spoiler:Maquia rejects Lang's offer]] to come live with him in a farm, [[spoiler:wanting to stay together with Erial]].

* InterspeciesAdoption: Maquia, who's from a race of immortals, adopts Erial, a human boy.

* KidsAreCruel: The kids, including Dita, tease Erial about his "weird" mom and how he still calls her "mommy". Dita later regrets her childish behavior.

* MaternityCrisis: Despite what Erial says about still having time, Dita [[InstantBirthJustAddLabor goes into labor]] as soon as the battle starts which leaves her to handle the matter on her own. Until [[ContrivedCoincidence Maquia comes along]].

* NeverTrustATrailer: PlayedForDrama. Both the promotional art and the opening scenes (discussion of love and loneliness, leading up to two side characters apparently becoming a couple) imply the story will be a romance, but it focuses primarily on motherhood. The only significant romantic subplot is between [[spoiler:Erial and Dita, after they're both grown up. Lang vaguely offers to marry Maquia, but she turns him down; Leillia's non-consensual marriage falls apart quickly, and she ultimately decides she cares more about her daughter than her [[{{Yandere}} somewhat loony]] original love interest]].

* ParentalIncest: Averted. [[spoiler:Maquia's own unchanging beauty causes Erial to eventually develop an actual Oedipus Complex towards her by the time he comes of age in his adolescence. This is what ultimately drives them apart, in 2 stages: Erial initially tries to [[SheIsNotMyGirlfriend shut down]] his own feelings for Maquia because they fundamentally disturb him (especially since their own Co-workers mistake them for just another teenage couple) by gradually distancing himself from her. Later, things come to a head when the stress of such a struggle finally becomes too much for him and he gets fully drunk for the first time in his life at their employer's bar one night. Upon arriving home, Maquia is shocked at his state and she confronts him over his long-growing distance from her. Erial responds by clumsily attempting to take their status quo to the [[RelationshipUpgrade next level]] by making a pass at her when he tries to kiss her. She rejects his romantic advances straight-out by literally slapping him down. This is what makes him decide the very next morning to move away from her and find work as a soldier in the capital. He finally manages to get over his romantic feelings for her -- his familial feelings for her still remain intact -- but only years later when he is already married to Dita, who is pregnant with their child. To top it all off, Dita reveals to Erial right before their kid is born that the [[FreudianExcuse reason]] why she bullied him when they were prepubescent children over his "[[FiveSecondForeshadowing liking]] his own Mom too much" was because she was always [[BelligerentSexualTension secretly]] in love with him herself and was thus always jealous of Maquia as she was also always [[GenreSavvy aware]] of Erial's hidden feelings for his adoptive mother, even long before he [[InternalReveal realized]] it for himself years later when he reached puberty]].
* ParentalSubstitute: Maquia chooses to be one for Erial.

* PleaseDontLeaveMe: Maquia cries "please don't go" after Erial leaves her to join the city guards.
* PlotParallel: Outside of Maquia and Erial, there is also a parallel between Maquia and Leillia's stories, with [[spoiler:motherhood]] being the focus of comparison.

* ReallyDeadMontage: To cement the tragedy of the experience, we get a whole clip's worth of memories of Erial's development up to his separation with Maquia [[spoiler:just after he dies of old age]].

* ScreamingBirth: The act of Dita giving birth to her and Erial's child comes with a lot of pain and screaming.

** Maquia gets mistaken for this while passing as both a non-Iorph and Erial's mother. This is the subject Dita and the village boys use to bully Erial in his childhood. As Erial gets older, Maquia has to start telling people she's his sister.

* WifeHusbandry: Gender-swapped and subverted. [[spoiler:Erial gradually develops romantic feelings for his adoptive mother Maquia but her own feelings for him still always remain just platonic only, and her rejection of his romantic advances towards her is what ultimately drives them apart for over a decade until they manage to reconcile when through a series of fortuitous coincidences, she ends up being the midwife to the birth of Erial's own child with literally the Girl Next Door who ironically teased him when they were kids because she was jealous of his crush/obsession on his own adoptive mother.]]
* YouAreBetterThanYouThinkYouAre: Both Erial and Maquia deliver a pep talk to each other when they meet after the battle.

* PublicSecretMessage: The system used to write words into Hibiol fabric is known only of the Iorph and those taught by them, so any hiding Iorph who wishes to get information out to other survivors can pull this off as long as the have access to a loom and there is a market for Hibiol.

The above was told by clan elder Rachine to the lonely Maquia, a 15 year old girl born to the Iorph tribe, those who while away their days weaving their reclusive near-eternal life into Hibiol fabric. But that very night, troopers from [[TheEmpire Mezarte Empire]] attack the village with their legendary Renato dragons, seeking the way to attain immortality. Maquia is separated from her home, her one-sided love Krim and her friend Leillia among many others, before finding an infant boy who lost his parents in a nearby forest. Overcome by her loneliness, she chooses to adopt Erial as her son, setting off a generation-spanning saga between a girl who never ages and a boy who will continually grow up; a story that teaches what relationship means in a world where nothing lasts forever.

* AbsurdlyYouthfulMother: Maquia gets mistaken for this while passing as both a non-Iorph and Erial's mother. This is the subject Dita and the village boys use to bully Erial in his childhood. As Erial gets older, Maquia has to start telling people she's his sister.

** ThePowerOfLove and how it can with stand the test of time.

* BaitAndSwitch: PlayedForDrama. Both the promotional art and the opening scenes (discussion of love and loneliness, leading up to two side characters apparently becoming a couple) imply the story will be a romance, but it focuses primarily on motherhood. The only significant romantic subplot is between [[spoiler:Erial and Dita, after they're both grown up. Lang vaguely offers to marry Maquia, but she turns him down; Leillia's non-consensual marriage falls apart quickly, and she ultimately decides she cares more about her daughter than her [[{{Yandere}} somewhat loony]] original love interest]].

** Krim reacts negatively to Erial calling Maquia his mother, and much later insists on cutting Maquia's Rapunzel Hair due to the the fact that female Iorph are not supposed to let their hair grow beyond a certain length unless they have had a child. His denial of mother-child bonds doesn't work well for his plan to save Leillia near the end of the movie.

* MayflyDecemberFriendship: The entire movie can be read as one from Maquia's perspective, whith the twist of "December" having been the one to raise "Mayfly".

* ParentalIncest: Averted. [[spoiler:Maquia's own unchanging beauty causes Erial to eventually develop an actual Oedipus Complex towards her by the time he comes of age in his adolescence. This is what ultimately drives them apart , in 2 stages: Erial initially tries to [[SheIsNotMyGirlfriend shut down]] his own feelings for Maquia because they fundamentally disturb him (especially since their own Co-workers mistake them for just another teenage couple) by gradually distancing himself from her. Later, things come to a head when the stress of such a struggle finally becomes too much for him and he gets fully drunk for the first time in his life at their employer's bar one night. Upon arriving home, Maquia is shocked at his state and she confronts him over his long-growing distance from her. Erial responds by clumsily attempting to take their status quo to the [[RelationshipUpgrade next level]] by making a pass at her when he tries to kiss her. She rejects his romantic advances straight-out by literally slapping him down. This is what makes him decide the very next morning to move away from her and find work as a soldier in the capital. He finally manages to get over his romantic feelings for her -- his familial feelings for her still remain intact -- but only years later when he is already married to Dita, who is pregnant with their child. To top it all off, Dita reveals to Erial right before their kid is born that the [[FreudianExcuse reason]] why she bullied him when they were prepubescent children over his "[[FiveSecondForeshadowing liking]] his own Mom too much" was because she was always [[BelligerentSexualTension secretly]] in love with him herself and was thus always jealous of Maquia as she was also always [[GenreSavvy aware]] of Erial's hidden feelings for his adoptive mother, even long before he [[InternalReveal realized]] it for himself years later when he reached puberty]].

The above was told by clan elder Rachine to the lonely Maquia, a 15 year old girl born to the Iorph tribe, those who while away their days weaving their reclusive near-eternal life into Hibiol fabric. But that very night, troopers from [[TheEmpire Mezarte Empire]] attack the village with their legendary Renato dragons, seeking the way to attain immortality. Maquia is separated from her home, her one-sided love Krim and her friend Leillia among many others, before finding an infant boy who lost his parents in a nearby forest. Overcome by her loneliness, she chooses to adopt Ariel as her son, setting off a generation-spanning saga between a girl who never ages and a boy who will continually grow up; a story that teaches what relationship means in a world where nothing lasts forever.

* AbsurdlyYouthfulMother: Maquia gets mistaken for this while passing as both a non-Iorph and Ariel's mother. This is the subject Dita and the village boys use to bully Ariel in his childhood. As Ariel gets older, Maquia has to start telling people she's his sister.

* AlwaysAChildToParent: What the teenage Ariel thinks of Maquia's treatment.

* BaitAndSwitch: PlayedForDrama. Both the promotional art and the opening scenes (discussion of love and loneliness, leading up to two side characters apparently becoming a couple) imply the story will be a romance, but it focuses primarily on motherhood. The only significant romantic subplot is between [[spoiler:Ariel and Dita, after they're both grown up. Lang vaguely offers to marry Maquia, but she turns him down; Leillia's non-consensual marriage falls apart quickly, and she ultimately decides she cares more about her daughter than her [[{{Yandere}} somewhat loony]] original love interest]].

* BittersweetEnding: The film does not play nice with its casts' lives. [[spoiler:Krim is killed, dying cold and alone unable to attain the love of his life. Leillia is finally set free, but at the cost of terrible lifelong trauma and leaving behind her daughter who barely got to see her even for just a passing moment. Maquia herself is faced with the inevitability of losing Ariel and non-Iorphs she came to care for all in her lifetime]]. But on the other hand, [[spoiler:the oppressive Mezarte eventually loses its power against neighboring nations, Iorph clan members eventually return to their home and rebuild their lives together, Ariel goes on to have a proper family of his own and Barlow assures Maquia that partings aren't all that bad, implying that there's much more to look forward to in the future]].
* {{Bookends}}: Maquia's first meeting with Ariel was when the latter was a newborn infant, holding on to her hand. [[spoiler:By the end of the movie, Maquia's last meeting with Ariel is when the latter is now an aged man, holding on to her hand as he passes away]].

* ChildhoodFriendRomance: Knowing that Dita [[spoiler:once teased Ariel back in childhood and never got the chance to apologize for it]], the last thing anybody expected is [[spoiler: Ariel coming back to settle down and start a family with her]].

* ComingOfAgeStory: One for both Maquia the parent and Ariel the child.

** [[spoiler:Lang]], who was rejected by [[spoiler:Maquia]] when he suggested living together. However, [[spoiler:Lang]] remains supportive to [[spoiler:Maquia and by extension Ariel]] [[IWantMyBelovedToBeHappy for the rest of his life]].

* DistantFinale: The film ends with [[spoiler:Maquia visiting the now utterly old Ariel (who went on to have a granddaughter) on what is possibly his deathbed for the last time]].

* EarnYourHappyEnding: And boy did Maquia and Ariel fight for it.

** The random wanderer Maquia meets right after finding Ariel has suspiciously detailed knowledge of the Iorph, even knowing her name and recognizing her as someone close to the tribe's elder. He shows up again later and reveals that [[spoiler:he's half-Iorph, and is heavily implied but not outright stated to be The Elder's son by a human man]].
** Krim reacts negatively to Ariel calling Maquia his mother, and much later insists on cutting Maquia's Rapunzel Hair due to the the fact that female Iorph are not supposed to let their hair grow beyond a certain length unless they have had a child. His denial of mother-child bonds doesn't work well for his plan to save Leillia near the end of the movie.

* GenerationalSaga: The film has a shade of this, as it follows Maquia and Ariel through the stages of life.

** A variant of this occurred near halfway point when [[spoiler:Maquia rejects Lang's offer]] to come live with him in a farm, [[spoiler:wanting to stay together with Ariel]].

* InterspeciesAdoption: Maquia, who's from a race of immortals, adopts Ariel, a human boy.

* ParentalIncest: Averted. [[spoiler:Maquia's own unchanging beauty causes Ariel to eventually develop an actual Oedipus Complex towards her by the time he comes of age in his adolescence. This is what ultimately drives them apart , in 2 stages: Ariel initially tries to [[SheIsNotMyGirlfriend shut down]] his own feelings for Maquia because they fundamentally disturb him (especially since their own Co-workers mistake them for just another teenage couple) by gradually distancing himself from her. Later, things come to a head when the stress of such a struggle finally becomes too much for him and he gets fully drunk for the first time in his life at their employer's bar one night. Upon arriving home, Maquia is shocked at his state and she confronts him over his long-growing distance from her. Ariel responds by clumsily attempting to take their status quo to the [[RelationshipUpgrade next level]] by making a pass at her when he tries to kiss her. She rejects his romantic advances straight-out by literally slapping him down. This is what makes him decide the very next morning to move away from her and find work as a soldier in the capital. He finally manages to get over his romantic feelings for her -- his familial feelings for her still remain intact -- but only years later when he is already married to Dita, who is pregnant with their child. To top it all off, Dita reveals to Ariel right before their kid is born that the [[FreudianExcuse reason]] why she bullied him when they were prepubescent children over his "[[FiveSecondForeshadowing liking]] his own Mom too much" was because she was always [[BelligerentSexualTension secretly]] in love with him herself and was thus always jealous of Maquia as she was also always [[GenreSavvy aware]] of Ariel's hidden feelings for his adoptive mother, even long before he [[InternalReveal realized]] it for himself years later when he reached puberty]].
* ParentalSubstitute: Maquia chooses to be one for Ariel.

* PlotParallel: Outside of Maquia and Ariel, there is also a parallel between Maquia and Leillia's stories, with [[spoiler:motherhood]] being the focus of comparison.

* ReallyDeadMontage: To cement the tragedy of the experience, we get a whole clip's worth of memories of Ariel's development up to his separation with Maquia [[spoiler:just after he dies of old age]].

* WifeHusbandry: Gender-swapped and subverted. [[spoiler:Ariel gradually develops romantic feelings for his adoptive mother Maquia but her own feelings for him still always remain just platonic only, and her rejection of his romantic advances towards her is what ultimately drives them apart for over a decade until they manage to reconcile when through a series of fortuitous coincidences, she ends up being the midwife to the birth of Ariel's own child with literally the Girl Next Door who ironically teased him when they were kids because she was jealous of his crush/obsession on his own adoptive mother.]]

* AllForNothing:
** Mezarte's [[spoiler:quest for immortality ends up losing against time as Leillia fails to turn up with a 'useful' heir and the Renatos die out, right around the time allied neighboring nations start attacking the empire in retribution for what they've done in the past]].
** [[spoiler:Krim's determination to free his love interest Leillia and bring back their old life costs him the death of many Iorph co-conspirators, loss of respect from Maquia and indirectly his own life. Even though Leillia left Mezarte in the end, she picked being able to see her own daughter over a life with Krim]].
* AlwaysAChildToParent: What the teenage Ariel thinks of Maquia's treatment.

* RapeAsDrama: [[spoiler:Leillia, and [[FridgeHorror possibly a few dozen other Iorph women whose fates are not shown or unmentioned, including the Elder.]]]].

* TheStinger: In the form of an "end card" image, showing [[spoiler:Maquia, Leillia, the last Renato, and a few other Iorph back in their homeland]].

[[caption-width-right:283:''"[[https://youtu.be/EK--rMbBh3Y Don't worry, I'll never forget.]]"'']]

[[quoteright:283:https://static.tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pub/images/image_4464.jpg]]

** Love can stand the test of time no matter what.

* ThemeTuneCameo: In one scene, Maquia hums the melody from the main piece of background music.

With that kind of story and production staff, [[TearJerker expect waterworks]].

* RapeAsDrama: [[spoiler:Leillia, and [[FridgeHorror possibly a few dozen other Iorph woman whose fates are not shown or unmentioned, including the Elder.]]]].

** People changes with time, both physically or mentally. And it's important to acknowledge this fact and move on.

* SocietyOfImmortals: The long-living Iorph, so-called "Clan of Partings/Clan of the Separated", whose body virtually stops aging when they reach teen age. They do not appear to be [[TheAgeless entirely ageless]], just extremely long-lived and slow to mature. Racine, the "Elder" of the tribe and supposedly at least 400 years older than Maquia, is significantly taller, curvier, and has a deeper voice than all the other Iorphs including the males. Half-Iorph children seem to depend on which parent they take after more, rather than being an even split between the traits of both species. Medmel is stated to lack all the classic outward characteristics of Iorphs, but because the Iorph grow and age like humans until their teenage years, there is no way the ministers and officials could possibly have known how long she would live when still just a little girl. At the climax of the film she does indeed look suspiciously youthful for a grown woman in her early 20s, but this may have been simply a side effect of the anime art style. Contrasted to this is Barlow, who describes himself as more or less Half-Iorph and is heavily implied to be the son of The Elder. More overtly Iorph physically, he still appears older than characters such as Krim or the nameless male Iorphs near the beginning. While not significantly changed at the end of the film from the beginning, his much longer hair and slightly darker skin might imply that he has "aged" over the course of the last 70+ years more so than the fully Iorph Maquia, who looks completely identical.

* ParentalSubstitute: Maquia choose to be one for Ariel.

* MyCountryRightOrWrong: Izol, a Mezarte general who works for the empire despite knowing fully well what his country has inflicted on the others, and seem disturbed at abuse Leilla has to endure.

** A variant of this occurred near halfway point when [[spoiler:Maquia rejects Lang's offer ]] to come live with him in a farm, [[spoiler:wanting to stay together with Ariel]].
** [[spoiler:Leillia, despite her tomboy personality and the fact that she was practically raped and imprisoned for ''years'', choose to not escape Mezarte with Krim in the end because of her wish to see her daughter who she hadn't even got a chance to see since her birth]]. This eventually sends [[spoiler:Krim]] off the edge.

** Krim reacts negatively to Ariel calling Maquia his mother, and much later insists on cutting Maquia's Rapunzel Hair due to the the fact that female Iorph are not supposed to let their hair grow beyond a certain length unless have had a child. His denial of mother-child bonds doesn't work well for his plan to save Leillia near the end of the movie.

* DistantFinale: The film ends with [[spoiler:Maquia visiting now utterly old Ariel (who went on to have a granddaughter) on what is possibly his deathbed for the last time]].

** [[spoiler:Krim]], who has to endure the knowledge that his lover [[spoiler:Leillia is practically raped and imprisoned by Mezarte]]. By the end of it, [[spoiler:Leilla choose her daughter over him, which caused him to [[IfICantHaveYou finally snap]]]].