Okay, I gotta be careful here. Last time I reviewed a critically acclaimed 2010s animé I did an almost complete 180 on my opinion of it in the process of writing the review with the result being the most schizophrenic thing I’ve ever written on this blog.

My point is, I’ve been holding off on writing this review just in case I have a similar reversal in opinion on Lu Over the Wall, but I’m pretty certain that my feelings on it are settled:

I think this is a mildly charming (if frustratingly unoriginal) “lonely boy makes friends with supernatural creature” story that is thoroughly undone by disastrous visuals and animation.

This is entirely subjective. I’m not saying the art style is bad per se. I’m just saying I hate it with every fibre of my being.

In the small fishing town of Hinashi, Kai Ashimoto lives with his divorced father and his grandfather. His father is trying to get him to knuckle down and study because exams are around the corner and jobs in the town are scarce. His grandfather, by contrast, is terrified of Kai going near the sea and spends his days making umbrellas. In his spare time, Kai writes music and posts it online which attracts the notice of two of his classmates, Kunio and Yuho, who try to convince him to join their band. Kunio is the son of a local priest and is forbidden from playing rock music, so the band have to rehearse in secret on Ningyojima, an island off the coast of the town where they’re forbidden from going.

See, historically, Hinashi has had beef with the Ningyo, half-human half fish creatures that, like the merfolk of Western folklore, seduce and enchant sailors to their doom. Unlike the merfolk of Western folklore, we must assume they have great personalities.

Kai reluctantly joins the band and, during their first rehearsal together, hears a mysterious voice singing along with them. On the boat ride back the trio run afoul of some illegal fishermen but are rescued when a mysterious shape swimming in the sea enchants the water and overturns their boat which causes Kai to drop his phone.

Fortunately, the phone is returned to him by a little mermaid named Lu who swims through his window in what looks like a solid body of bright green piss.

So this is one of the choices that makes me unreasonably unhappy with this film. Every-time Lu does her water-bender schtick, it transforms the water into a neon green that, I’m sorry, makes it look like Gatorade piss. I don’t know why they chose to do it that way. I do not like it.

Lu begins to follow Kai around and even helps him come first in his swimming exam. At the next rehearsal Kai reveals Lu to the other band members and it turns out that listening to his music causes Lu to grow legs and dance and sing like a chipmunk on helium.

So. You may be thinking “wait a minute, lonely Japanese boy, adorable little mer-toddler who becomes infatuated with him and grows legs to come on land, this sound awfully like a certain other film.“

Yeah, when I made the Ponyo joke at the end of the last review, I didn’t realise how close to the mark I was. My first instinct was to be generous and assume that Miyazaki and the creators of this film were drawing on the same Japanese folktale but apparently Ponyo‘s story is largely original in which case, yeah, this feels like it’s walking right up to the line of plagiarism. It’s not a complete rip off, but there’s a lot of similarities, including the mer-child having an overly protective father and the climax involving the town being flooded and the townspeople being rescued by sea creatures. Apparently the original conception for the film was that Lu would be a vampire (there are holdovers from this in that the mermaids in this movie are vulnerable to sunlight and the people are afraid that being bitten by them will turn them into fish) and I honestly think that would have worked so much better. The movie would have then avoided comparison to Ponyo which it desperately needs to do because this movie is no Ponyo (and I say that as someone who considers Ponyo minor Miyazaki at best).

Firstly there’s the obvious inferiority of the animation. Now, I will say this, I don’t like Lu’s animation but it’s certainly not bad. In fact, it moves with a wonderful fluidity that reminds me of early Flesicher cartoons.

But it achieves this by basically making the character models as simplified as it can get away with. There’s very little detail, zero variation in line-thickness, almost no sense of weight or mass and it feels kinda amateurish.

Another way in which Lu falls short of its inspiration is in the relationship between its two main characters.

Sosuke and Ponyo love each other but in the way of two very small children who just adore hanging out because each one thinks the other is the coolest. Kai and Lu though?

I’m really not sure how we’re supposed to read this relationship. It’s nothing blatant or anything. But there’s a scene of Kai immediately after meeting Lu and he’s wandering the streets with this dumb faraway look on his face and it kinda reads like “he’s just met the girl of his dreams”. But then we get scenes of him showing her around town and she’s basically a tiny, barely verbal toddler and…eesh. Like I say, nothing you can point to and say “slap the cuffs on ’em” but it feels off.

Anyway, the band perform at a local festival and Lu’s existence is revealed to the town and her singing causes the whole crowd to start dancing. Lu becomes an instant celebrity and Yuho’s grandfather, who’s a big muck-a-muck in the local business community decides to reopen his old merfolk themed amusement park on Ningyojima which shuttered because…this town hated merfolk with a passion before this moment so I don’t know why he thought that was a viable business model. That’s like…putting Barack Obama Plaza in Alabama.

Yuho gets upset about Lu stealing the spotlight and runs away. This coincides with lots of weird ocean shenanigans like fish skeletons crawling on on land and Yuho’s father, the mayor, suspects that the merfolk have kidnapped her and a wave of anti-merfolk hysteria starts sweeping the town. The mayor locks Lu in a warehouse and threatens to expose her to sunlight which of course will kill her because she is a mermaid.

Kai learns from Kunio’s father that the people of the village used to worship the merfolk but that one day a mermaid was left out to die in the sun (for some reason) and that triggered a terrible curse.

Meanwhile, Lu’s father, who is a big shark man in a suit, hears her cries of fear and comes to rescue her, almost bursting alive in the sunlight.

Both Lu and her father are trapped in a massive iron dome by the townspeople but the curse has been triggered and now the whole town is in danger of being drowned in bright green gatorade piss.

Kai, Yuho and Kunio team up to rescue Lu and her father with the help Yuho’s grandfather (who, as mentioned before, is rich as balls and owns a helicopter). Once they’re freed, Lu and her father decide to let bygones be bygones and call all the merfolk to help evacuate the town. But, it takes too long and the merfolk are exhausted and left out in the sea as the sun rises. But, fortunately Kai’s grandfather, who has renounced his merfolk hating ways, arrives with a load of umbrellas which the merfolk use to save themselves. Kai tells Lu that she’s his friend and the movie ends with a big dance party, the universal symbol of “let’s just end this thing for God’s sake”.

***

Most movies would be better with vampires. But this is probably the movie that would be most better with vampires.

Scoring

Animation: 07/20

Not technically incompetent but ugly as fuck.

Leads: 10/20

Not an original idea in its head, this movie.

Villain: N/A

Supporting Characters: 12/20

Meh.

Music: 13/20

Kai’s band has a couple of bops.

FINAL SCORE: 53%

NEXT UPDATE: 24 July 2025

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