Young Masashi moves with his mother to a small town after his father is killed in the earthquake and tsunami of 2011, a town that is home to a large, and largely secret, laboratory where Masashi's uncle works. As soon as he arrives, he meets a small flying monster living in the apartment and, as he becomes friends with it, he names it Kurage-bo ("Jellyfish boy"). Soon he finds that all the kids in school have their own special monsters, called a F.R.I.E.N.D., which they can control with the use of a cell-phone type device. Masashi doesn't have such a device, however, and some of the other boys are using their creatures to fight one another, bullying the smaller creatures and kids. Why are these creatures there, and does the laboratory have anything to do with it? What is the laboratory trying to create, anyway, and will that secret work be a force for good or for evil in the world? Masashi, Kurage-bo and some other young children and creatures may have to sacrifice all to find out....
This is a very sweet, somewhat poignant children's movie, that draws upon manga, Pokemon and, to my eyes anyway, some muppets as well, in order to create a world in which the environmental changes caused by humans are able to be explored. It's absolutely gorgeous to look at, sometimes psychedelic even, and while the story-line sometimes jumps rather abruptly, the film's pro-environmental message is nicely stated. Quite a feast for the eyes!
