Children who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below... and the films about them that are not quite as good as they should be

The plot for Children Who Chase Lost Voices from Deep Below is actually fairly simple. A young girl whose father is dead and whose nurse mother is mostly absent ventures into a mythical underworld with a government agent who believes he can get his dead wife back by going there. It's anime, so it's got some great visuals, some interesting design work--the "God" in the underworld is a great visual, for example, like a multi-oared boat flying through the sky the first few times it's seen then transforming into a many-eyed human-shaped thing when it comes time to assist in the government agent's resurrection of his wife...

And, that last bit is not much of a spoiler. That there is resurrection coming is kinda the point of the story, or rather the plot. The story seems to be leaning toward some deeper exploration into grief and coming to terms with loss, except the main girl never really deals with her father's death and never once considers bringing him back. And, the agent is so inexpressive that his grief is all but nonexistent. Still the movie is entertaining. It is entertaining as an adventure story, these two characters and those who help them or that they meet along the way interact in interesting ways, there is tension and drama and though there may be no clear antagonist, there are some villainous inclusions here and there, and there is some good conflict.

The problem, as I see it, is this movie needs more internal conflict. It needs more of the agent's grief, more of the girl's grief. When--SPOILERS AHEAD, not that there haven't already been some--the agent's wife can only return to flesh by possessing the girl, there should be a bigger dilemma for the agent or he should come across as a villain, but there is really neither. It is simple another thing that happens. When the strange shadow creatures come after the characters, it seems more an exericse in worldbuilding than storytelling and... I must admit I'm not sure if there is some source material here that has greater detail, maybe a comic or something--certainly not an actual mythology, since this one incorporates seemingly Japanese ideas about nature with some South American details; the guardian creatures that keep overlanders out are called Quetzal Coatls for example. There are elements here that seem like windowdressing, even though there's a great plot at the center. The story just never quite gets everything together into one cohesive whole. What could have been a fantastic drama about grief and loss disguised as an adventure yarn is instead simply an adventure yarn. And, I don't mean to judge the film simply on what I imagine it to be; there are points in the film where grief is explicitly brought up, hinting at themes that seem to want to be here but aren't.

All in all, still an enjoyable film. It just needed to be more if it was going to hint at much bigger things; I mean, there's a god and giant animalian guardians, shadow creatures, violence, and even a cute little kitten. This movie should be better but is still quite good.