Maquia resolves to raise him, though she’s still a child herself, and calls him Eriel (Yuuki Sakurai). But when the Iolph settlement is attacked by armored soldiers from the nearby kingdom of Mezarte riding ferocious flying dragons, and Maquia accidentally ends up miles from home with no way back, it’s not a romantic interest she encounters but a squalling baby, still clutched in his dead mother’s arms. In another film, from a different storytelling tradition, perhaps, this would cue up some tragic love affair. Lonely despite her friendship with the beautiful, adventurous Leilia (Ai Kayano), Maquia is cautioned by the tribal Elder that she will be lonelier still if she ever falls in love with an outsider, as she will be destined to vastly outlive her partner. They are also blessed/cursed with extreme longevity, and Maquia, at 15, is as old as she is ever going to look. Maquia is a timid 15-year-old hailing from the Clan of the Separated, AKA the Iolph, an ancient enclave of blond-haired mystics who weave Hibiol, a fine, translucent cloth that marks the passage of time and contains messages only other Iolph can read.
It is exquisite in every way - sometimes almost too exquisite in its precious sensitivity to the hardships of life as an outcast single mother - but against such intricate magic-hour backdrops, the only thing not beautiful here is the ugly-cry its devastating, happy-sad finale induces. “Maquia: When the Promised Flower Blooms” is the directorial debut of prolific and successful anime screenwriter Mari Okada (“Anohana: The Flower We Saw That Day”), and though set in a medieval-styled, distinctly “Game of Thrones”-esque fantasy world of dying dragons, imprisoned princesses, warring kingdoms, and mystical cloth into which is woven the stories of our lives, the trembling, overflowing heart of the film is a story of motherhood, self-sacrifice, and forgiveness that is informed by Okada’s own fraught relationship with her mother. But mother or no, it’s a promise any viewer of this gorgeously rendered, acutely sentimental animated phantasmagoria would be foolhardy to make. “I’m a mother!” she says, beating her fist lightly against her belly in a gesture of defiance that makes the boy smile. “I won’t cry, I promise,” vows the ethereal, long-living Maquia (voiced by Manaka Iwami) to the little mortal boy she is raising as her son.