The Imaginary Review - Netflix Releases a Wonderful New Japanese Animated Film

Yes, it's yet another movie about imaginary friends, but this one is something special.

Not that stories about imaginary friends are new – everything from Drop Dead Fred to Foster's Home for Imaginary Friends to Inside Out (via poor Bing Bong) have tackled the idea before – but it seems to be a particularly popular subject matter in 2024. Just in the past few months, we’ve had Blumhouse’s Imaginary and IF and now there’s the animated film The Imaginary, which is getting an international release via Netflix on July 5. It may be opening after the others in most of the world – though it had a theatrical run in Japan back in December – but The Imaginary stands out as the best of this new imaginary friend-themed bunch by far, combining gorgeous animation with a touching story that builds a wonderfully creative world for its characters to exist in. 

Based on the 2014 book of the same name, The Imaginary centers on Rudger, who looks like a little boy but is in fact the imaginary friend to a young girl named Amanda. The opening scenes, showing us the fantastic and limitless imagined adventures they go on, instantly highlight the talent of the Studio Ponoc animators who worked on the film, as it’s packed with beautiful colors and amazing and wonderfully detailed visuals. We watch as Rudger and Amanda go on journeys alongside stone giants, snow creatures, flying whales literally made of the ocean (as opposed to swimming in the ocean), and more, against a series of gorgeous backdrops. There are some really clever touches here from the get go, including how Amanda’s attic playroom appears to literally explode open when she and Rudger set off on their next imagined quest.