Just stuff happening.
Not to be cheeky, but this is just a series of loosely connected events, with very one dimensional characters, very little emotional journey and nothing much to look at beyond the standard.
Akane bunks off school on her birthday. Although she’s not bullied, she doesn’t stand up when she sees bullying, despite knowing it’s wrong. Rather than another day of being a coward, she sulks at home. Her mum lets her stay so long as she runs a bouquet of flowers down the road to Chii, a young woman who runs the local bric-a-brac store and gives off heavy New Age lesbian vibes. For no fucking reason whatsoever, a magician appears in the store’s basement and takes Akane and Chii down to Wonderland, a magical land facing a new peril. Luckily Akane is destined to stop it.
I feel even this short description fleshes out the characters more than the film. Akane is always nervous and scared, Chii loves travelling and doing new things. That’s it. That’s their whole characters. And they meet the standard wizards and princes that are yawningly generic and instantly forgettable. The first I checked the time was 20 minutes in, which isn’t a good sign.
Even visually it’s nothing special. There’s 6-foot sheep, and fields of flowers, and massive fish, and tiny thumb-sized imps, but nothing that ever makes you say, “Wow!” In fact, I wanted to check when it was made, because although it was only 2019, it looks older.
Dunno. Will likely not remember anything about it in a week’s time.