seen at the jan 18th premiere event, where i got a neat little collectible ticket.  mary and the witchs flower couldve been a knock-out start from studio ponoc. the film had so much more potential than what was actually realized in the final product. i could very easily see myself giving this four and half stars if they simply did a few things: - improve the animation quality in certain scenes when its not action-focused or a clear sakuga moment. - this is a small one, but change the big reveal that occurs near the end of the film to something else that i thought up of while i was watching the movie. i wont claim to be a better storyteller than the folks over at studio ponoc, but i thought it wouldve much more clever and fitting of the films world. - fix up the third act/final confrontation. as it stands its kind of bland, bloated with exposition and ideas that turn out to be kinda pointless. this goes for the ending as well, which feels rushed and without closure for characters other than mary and peter. like many people, i did find the film to be a tad samey to ghiblis previous efforts. given that its an adaptation of a pre-existing book and not claiming to be a new and original work, ill give it a pass. it didnt ruin the movie for me. far from it, in fact. this really did feel like a new ghibli film, and that is such a good takeaway to have for this film.  so full of charm, heart, and laughs. and while the animation quality isnt perfectly consistent as it was in the past, it was goddamn breathtaking a lot of the time. overall, i really enjoyed this film, though i do feel a very very very slight twinge of disappointment at just how much better it couldve been. heavily looking forward to studio ponocs future projects.