Hello, welcome back to another Emma review session.
When I saw the trailer, the odd-one-out premise of Encanto wasn’t that appealing to me.
Even though I made up my mind to not watch it, my friends encouraged me to watch it with them because of all the hype behind it—and ever since, I’ve loved it!
Encanto left me crying—and I don’t cry at movies a lot. The movie is much more than just the feels—the mystery and symbolism allow someone to rewatch the movie multiple times with something new to discover. I must have watched this movie like five times because you can see the effort the team put into making each scene in the movie. Also, if you have the chance, Encanto compilations are the best for analyzing and seeing each individual member of the family. You will slowly realize who is your favorite.
Encanto is so good that, just with my rant, you should give it a chance. Find another animation lover and watch it with them. It makes it so much better to watch the movie with someone there—especially for creating theories based on the scenes!
Anyway, a short summary for context: Encanto is about a magical home (casita) where every member of the family has magical powers blessed by a magical candle, except Mirabel, our protagonist. This story describes her journey of restoring the house after it starts to fall apart and eventually bringing her family together.
Now that you know how the storyline goes, I want to specifically analyze the story through its characters—especially its main character, Mirabel.
For one, the plotline of Encanto seems to be one I have seen in a lot of children’s books. The main character, who has no powers, suddenly ends up saving everyone due to the main character’s human nature. They usually come off as a self-insert—someone who wants to be seen as special in another remarkable world. The protagonists have no defining characteristics, so the story drives them through something like the magic of friendship. This lets the viewer easily put themselves into the story and lets them become an amazing character in this world.
This is reminiscent of a character archetype in anime which some people name as “doormat-kun,” a typical isekai protagonist who gets transported to another world to become its savior. However, Encanto subverts Mirabel by not feeling like a typical character;even though we don’t know much about her likes, dislikes, hobbies, etc, the movie does a good job of showing off her personality, wants, and place in the family. Her wants were very clearly expressed in the first few minutes of the movie, where she exclaims how she wants to “make her family proud” right before her own gift ceremony, and this sentiment is carried throughout the rest of the film. Her personality being very upbeat, a bit all over the place, adventurous but also a very sweet girl who loves her family is simply seen in the first song, “The Family Madrigal.” She is able to proudly talk about her family through her extravagant dance and song throughout the town. The scene afterwards helps to show her place in the family as she is shunned, singled out, and slightly insulted by her family and townspeople. It helps to solidify the point that she isn’t like the others despite all her attempts to be helpful to the rest of the family.
Now another aspect of Maribel I would like to analyze is her maturity. This is because she is canonically fifteen years old but appears very mature for her age. Also, not going to lie, but the other characters she is compared to like Anna from Frozen, or Raya from Raya and the Last Dragon — they suck.
You see, the conflicts and environment of their own respective stories helps to shape these characters’ mental ages. Anna feels much younger due to her years of isolation. Raya feels older and has had to fend for herself since she was a young child. For these characters, they were royalty with dead parents or a daughter of a clan who died out due to a mysterious plague. I feel Encanto, which is set in a normal town but with a magical house and family, is much closer to our own reality. Fun Fact: the style of the movie is called magical realism in which magical elements are put in realistic settings—it is a known aspect of Latin American literature. In addition, Mirabel feels much older because she is dealing with a much deeper personal problem that many of us struggle with in the real world—wanting to be accepted by your family. It’s a struggle many of us deal with way past our youth. It makes Mirabel a character that others can relate to.
Spoiler Alert is an Opinion culture column used to give reviews for movies, television shows, or other related media.
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