What Is The Plot Of Anime Midori?

‘Midori’ is a raw, unsettling and somewhat sorrowful short film. A young and homeless girl joins a traveling circus sideshow in the hope of finding a family and a home. But instead of love and comfort she is subjected to repeated cruelty and manipulated by the various characters of the show. ‘Midori’ is a powerful expose of how systems that trade on human spectacle can consume the most vulnerable of people.

The work is constructed as a series of vignettes and so has a patchwork-like quality. Some of the scenes are set within performances by the circus and some are scenes of brutality but they are all interlocked to produce a sense of Midori’s growing isolation. The work has a very grotesque and somewhat surreal aesthetic and therefore makes the dark parts more distorted and dream-like than realist.

It’s not an easy watch, but a very sad and powerful story of a little girl who just wanted to belong to a family, and how she gets tricked into a life of revolting cruelty instead.

‘Midori’ is a warped fairytale which lures you in with promise of wonder and then delivers the other side of the coin. The basic plot follows that of a young girl, Midori, who is taken in by a traveling ‘freak show’ and discovers that the only ‘shelter’ she finds there is to be exploited and verbally and physically abused by the bizarre and highly odd members of the show.

The anime mostly focuses on atmosphere and shock, with it following the scenes of the creepy and bizarre performances of the carnival’s different acts. And also the decay and degradation of Midori. The plot mostly follows the search of Midori for warmth and safety, but is consistently betrayed. And there is much satire in the work too. For example the show within the story comments on the audience as well as critiquing the function of spectacle to entertain by means of the suffering of others.

It’s a cult classic which is largely notorious due to the graphic scenes of horror, abuse and exploitation depicted within it, so it’s very much discussed within the debate of censorship vs. artistic freedom, and it’s definitely not for everyone, but it’s a very powerful and thought-provoking watch that challenges people to question their own thoughts on compassion and how to deal with people who have been exploited.

The above short film is one of those stories that stays with you long after it’s finished. I’ll try to provide a summary of “Midori” as best as I can.

A traveling fair featuring a collection of strange performers and oddities, a tiny circus, promises food, shelter and possibly even love to the lonely and lost. And for a time, it seems that Midori has finally found hope and a place to call home with these very strange and very different people. Yet beneath the glamour of the bizarre, the alterior motives of the performers are masked. And slowly but surely, the very best hopes of Midori are revealed to be nothing more than her worst fears.

The story descends into cruelty and exploitation, and becomes the dark and often surreal journey of a desperate little girl, who believed she had found a family in the small traveling circus, only to find that its members were exploiting and abusing her. The narrative is non-linear and intersperses the disgusting with the heartbreak, creating a series of vignettes that make for a most uncomfortable and often gag-inducing read. Adapted from the manga Shoujo Tsubaki by Suehiro Maruo, Midori is as beautiful and odd as Maruo’s work is to read.

Please note this is not a ‘light’ film. The film is very disturbing and shocking in equal measure, leaving some viewers in tears and being deeply upset by it. The film is emotionally haunting in equal measure to the story, and I find the remaining affection and love towards Midori even in her darkest moments the most heart breaking of all.