Maquia is an Iorph, a female human fairy, living for thousands of years in their secluded village. Humans from the Kingdom of Mezarte attack their village and kidnap Leilia in order to marry her to the human Prince, since the power of their kingdom is decreasing. Maquia finds a murdered human family, takes pity on their little baby and decides to adopt it and be his mother. Maquia names the child Ariel. She finds refuge inside a house of a widow with two children, one of whom is Lang, who falls in love with Maquia. Now a teenager, Ariel is aware that Maquia is not his mother and is ageing much more slowly. As a grown up, he feels distant from her and becomes a soldier in the Mezarte army. After a war breaks out, Leilia leaves her daughter and flies away with Maquia on a dragon. Decades later, a still young Maquia returns to see Ariel one more time. He married and has grandchildren, but is now old. When he dies, Maquia sheds a tear and leaves.
"Maquia" is a good anime, a very emotional little story. Its author, Mari Okada, is privately an outsider, and thus transmitted that experience of an outsider into a fantasy story—in this case, the title fairy trying to understand humans when she adopts a human baby. It seems they may have wanted to make an OVA series, since the story, in this edition, is occasionally jumping through a lot of stuff in huge ellipses (for instance, from Ariel as a kid to an adult), and thus tried to cram all this in only two hours. However, the concept is interesting, even fascinating—the relationship between a long-lived and a short-lived being. For him, this era is his entire life, while for her, this is just one short episode in a much longer experience of a superhuman existence. His entire life is just a footnote for her longevity, but she still tries to understand him and feel his emotions. There are gentle little episodes that adorn "Maquia": she has no clue how to feed the baby, so she puts it under a cow's udder; when Krim hugs Maquia, the little kid Ariel "mingles" between their stomachs out of jealousy; while working as a waitress in a pub, Maquia is so overjoyed upon seeing the now grown up Lang that she drops a giant menu plaque, but a knight lifts his arm to hold it from falling on his table. The aspect that bothers the most is the unnecessary subplot involving white dragons and a war in the Kingdom, since they are basically irrelevant and contribute nothing to the main story. In a few moments, the film is too melodramatic, as well, yet the ending is remarkably honest, genuine and heartfelt, one of the more emotional ones of the decade.
Grade:++
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