Author: Not Alison

Coping With Urusei Yatsura Movie 4: Lum the Forever (1986)

~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment

Trying to Explic the Inexplicable

In honor of the movie’s U.S. blu-ray release on the 28th of June (2022) . . .

The anime series Urusei Yatsura (colloquially translated as something like “Buncha Alien Jerks” or “Those Obnoxious Aliens”), based on the manga by Rumiko Takahashi, has more than its share of weirdness, to put it mildly. Viewers of the show were treated to quite a lot of absurdity, oddness, nonsense, and unfamiliar imagery. Nowadays UY is likely best known through the second movie, Beautiful Dreamer, but probably nothing in the entire animated franchise is more surreal and unreal than the fourth movie, Lum the Forever.

It deals with supernatural themes and mysterious disappearances. It doesn’t explain things that happen. It shows things that don’t seem logical even within the story. Was it badly written? Was it sloppy film-making? Was the director being deliberately incomprehensible to thumb his nose at the world? Did we the viewers simply miss things by not paying attention?

I won’t claim to understand everything about Lum the Forever, but here are some thoughts I wrote down the last time I watched it, a few years back (with a tiny bit added here and there).

• This movie is aimed at people with a passionate knowledge of the regular TV series, made by hardcore fans for hardcore fans. The kind of people who can catch a subtle reference to a single episode that aired three years earlier and say to themselves, “Oh yeah! I remember that!” From Sakura’s yokai friends to the air-breathing capsule to Megane’s armor to the reason Kotatsu-Neko might disappear, there are a host of things new viewers or casual viewers would simply be baffled by. And the movie already has more than enough to be confused by without people asking why on earth Ataru would stuff a pickled plum in Lum’s mouth.

It’s practically a given that a movie based on a TV series will reward (or pander to) the fanbase by throwing in little treats—character cameos, inside jokes, a significant object sitting in the background. What’s different in Lum the Forever is that those insider treats are actually relevant within the plot, and the filmmakers still made no effort to explain them.

• Just before she enters the water in one scene, Lum puts something in her mouth—not a single thing is said about it, but it must be one of the air-breathing tablets shown in the episode where the group visits Mendou’s aquarium and tries to bring the “pool ghoul” back together with his true love. Which explains how Lum can breathe while she’s stuck underwater all that time.

• It’s useful to recall that Kotatsu-Neko is not just a giant cat who drinks tea at a kotatsu, he’s a giant ghost cat who drinks tea at a kotatsu.

• They never do tell us the original ending of the “Legend of the Oni Princess.” This is a significant shortcoming in the film. The movie shows Ataru, Mendou, and Megane going to visit Mendou’s grandfather, but we never actually see him. Surely there was meant to be a scene with the grandfather outlining the whole legend, but it must have been cut, resulting in the absence of a crucial piece of the story. 

Perhaps in the legend the Oni princess gave birth (literally or figuratively) to the next demon-confining tree: one tree dies, but the Oni births the next tree, and thus the evil spirits are controlled once more. It could be that she died and was buried and became the next tree. Did the legend say something about the Oni princess becoming a companion to the area’s guardian spirit and thus placating that spirit? Could it be that the Oni became the wife of the guardian spirit and they were together parents to the new tree?

• The “Battle Champion Mendou” dream is much too long. For this we lost a segment explaining that legend?

• Mendou’s words at the town assembly might lead one to believe that Tomobiki town wants to get rid of Lum, to expel her from itself, because she is a “foreign particle” (like an infection). However, it seems instead that Tomobiki wants Lum as a friend. (Or lover?) Everyone else is essentially part of Tomobiki and only Lum, as something other than Tomobiki, is a suitable companion. (This is the sense behind the answer to Ran’s remark that she’s also an alien: yes, Ran is also foreign to the town, but she’s just not worth talking to.) The question then becomes why Tomobiki would make everyone else forget Lum, but apparently this is a way of making sure Tomobiki can keep Lum to itself (if people in the town missed Lum and felt a longing for her, that might awaken her and pull her away).

• Mendou starts the war with the Mizunikojis believing that if life becomes horrible enough, everyone in Tomobiki will be unified in the single desire to have things go back to the way they used to be. Mendou expects that this will somehow make the consciousness of Tomobiki release them from the dream world they’re trapped in, presumably by waking up that consciousness. Apparently this is what occurs, combined, however, with Ataru waking up Lum through his desire to see her again (Lum and Tomobiki are shaken from their dream communion at the same moment and therefore the “spell” around the town is broken).

• This movie does a poignant job suggesting that everyone would have been better off if Lum had never been around.

A good site for learning more about Urusei Yatsura is http://www.furinkan.com/uy/index.html. (I have no affiliation with them; it’s just an honest recommendation.)

Reflections: Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind (1982–94 Manga)

~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment
photo of the box set of the manga Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind by Hayao Miyazaki, showing the front of the outer box, the front of the first hardback volume, one edge of the second hardback volume, and part of the included poster

1. The Lore
Once upon a time, in those dim days before Studio Ghibli and Hayao Miyazaki had worldwide fame and acclaim, Miyazaki wanted to make an anime film about a girl who flew through a poison land on a small vehicle and consorted with giant intelligent arthropods. However, the lofty ones who held the money would not provide him any unless the film were based on a successful manga. Therefore, Miyazaki set to work creating Nausicaa in print.

It was enough; before long, those people who sat on their piles of gold offered him some, and the film was made, and audiences were stunned and delighted.

Yet the manga did not end, and Miyazaki continued on, crafting his non-animated story in long, steady detail and bringing it to another conclusion with rich depth and broad reach.

And those who know the manga are still grateful he did so.

2. The Reading Experience
Miyazaki took the story in different directions in film and manga. The manga isn’t just the movie with extra background filled in; there are significant divergences in the basic plot, though a lot is recognizable from one version to the other.

Color plays an important role in the story (dressed in blue, blue eyes vs. red eyes, even miasma that’s said to be a different color). That’s strange for something published in black and white, with the result that characters must constantly tell us what color something is, but of course it comes from Nausicaa’s origin as an anime proposal.

When it comes to one particular entity, readers may need to be reminded that Nausicaa appeared well before Gainax’s Evangelion. On the other hand, the manga had a long publication run, so I’m not sure whether the chapters with the villains in eyeball masks predate Nadia: The Secret of Blue Water (1990–91), and I don’t remember if they’re in the Nausicaa film.

The most recent publication of Nausicaa in the U.S. is a large-size 2-volume set of hardbacks encased in a sturdy box. One downside to this presentation is that there aren’t many chapter breaks or other clearly defined stopping points, so it’s easy to get sucked in and just keep reading and reading and reading, instead of making time to digest what you’ve already devoured. And there’s a lot that deserves to be thought about along the way.

3. Some Points to Ponder
Nausicaa is pure of heart, but that purity can erupt in ruthless violence when she sees someone threatening others or in recklessness when she thinks someone needs saving; singleness of mind can lead to action without thought of consequences.

Nausicaa inspires fierce love and devotion in the people following her . . . and so does Kushana, one of the main antagonists.

When Nausicaa fights hand-to-hand she has no great upper-body strength, so instead she uses her lightness, throwing aside conventional combat and relying on nimble, agile grace to flash past an opponent’s defenses. There’s an early scene where she uses a sword almost as long as she is tall; instead of wielding it the ordinary way, she swings it like a scythe, then uses it to vault herself in the air. Her body is flexible and so are her methods.

photo of panel from the Nausicaa manga, written and drawn by Hayao Miyazaki, showing Nausicaa charging at an armor-clad soldier; he raises a large ax, while she is holding a long sword with one hand gripping a handle guard and the other hand cupping the pommel; she wears no armor
panels from Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind, volume 1, page 59

Nature will find a balance. However, that may take centuries, and there is no reason to expect that human beings will survive in the meantime. In the wake of global near-annihilation, nature is not bent on rescuing a particular species, whether that’s a triceratops or us.

Nausicaa presents war as senseless, brutal, horrible, and tragic. War creates suffering for soldiers and noncombatants and the natural world, and sometimes for the rulers who made the decision to fight.

In the war neither side is right. One side invaded, but the other had already prepared catastrophic biological weapons and was eager to use them, even where that endangered its own people.

Saving one or two lives in the middle of a war where thousands die might seem pointless or futile. But it does matter.

Over and over in Nausicaa someone who seems plainly a villain does something unvillainous, whether it’s a single good deed, being surprisingly brave and willing to listen, or changing completely to follow a different path. (And yet not every villain will change.)

When people tell you you’re going overboard with your idealism, sometimes you should ignore them and march forward on your principles; other times you should listen because you really are going too far. Just because Nausicaa is right to ignore advice sometimes doesn’t mean she’s right every time, and as readers we don’t have to believe that all of her choices are the right ones or even the best available.

Nausicaa is told of another idealist who started out determined to make life better for everyone, but “When the peasants proved to be incorrigibly stupid, he grew to hate them” and went on to do monstrous things. She also learns of a group of people who believed humans would one day be mature enough to act without hatred and cruelty, and so left powerful technology open to abuse by later generations, generations that saw only weaponry and victory over enemies.

Nausicaa avoids becoming like either example. First because people warn her of the danger (or mock her with it), and she doesn’t delude herself that she’s somehow better or purer than those previous people so it won’t happen to her. She remains able to doubt her own perfection. Second because in all of her idealism and faith in the value of humanity and other creatures, in all her burning desire to save everyone and make life good, she won’t hide from the truth that people do horrible things to each other, whether they’re rulers, soldiers, peasants, or priests. She knows this, and wants to save them anyway, not because they’re good and just but simply because they live.

Finding the good in someone does not mean ignoring the bad in that person.

The story, in fact, depicts Nausicaa slowly coming to grips with her own taint of evil. For much of the journey she mentally pictures herself as a child although her body is grown. It takes several times being confronted in one way or another before she can wrestle with the fact that she is not innocent and she too has killed and she too has taken part in destruction.

There’s a scene where someone asks Nausicaa, “Was I a good person?” It’s significant that she doesn’t answer this question directly. Instead she says, “I’m proud of you and you were brave and pure of heart.” Which isn’t quite the same.

It’s a good question whether Nausicaa has the right to take actions that affect the future of all humanity. And yet she’s opposing people who are already taking actions that affect the future of humanity. What right do they have? She’s aware, finally, that she might be wrong and her actions might have bad consequences. She realizes that what she’s doing might be a mistake, and yet allowing things to go on as they have been going is unacceptable.

She calls one of her previous choices a gamble. The action she takes at the end is also a gamble, but she’s not betting on an improvement in human nature, she’s betting on the power of life, the ability of living things to adapt and continue when the world around them changes. Life is determined to live and will find a way no one might foresee.

Reflections: The Secret of NIMH (1982)

~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment
photo of the cover of the blu-ray release of the 1982 movie The Secret of NIMH, focussed on a cutely drawn mouse holding an amulet with a reflective red stone

1. The Nostalgic Part
This is another one of those movies I loved as a child, fascinated by and drawn to the dangerous, frightening parts: strange experiments changing you into something you weren’t, companions perishing in a desperate escape, wounds that bleed.

For me this movie has always been blanketed with a layer of tragedy. Bambi is famous for traumatizing children with their first dose of animated death, but in my childhood it was Secret of NIMH that stood out for the weight of physical danger and horrible things being done to you against your will. I wasn’t in any doubt about what happened to those mice that fell down the shaft during the escape, or about the fact that the experiments were horribly painful to the rats. By this time I had seen Star Wars, Clash of the Titans,  and Dragonslayer, but the violence in those live-action movies didn’t affect me the way things in NIMH did. Was NIMH more disturbing because it was less glaringly fantasy-based; because the movie kept things more mysterious; or simply because the story was more intimate so I cared more about the characters? Or was it maybe because all the live-action heroes were fighting back, and the animated mice and rats were so terribly helpless?

2. The Background
The movie is based on a book, Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH by Robert C. O’Brian, published in 1971. I haven’t read it, but I’ve heard the film changed a lot, which is what you’d expect.

The movie changed the lead character’s name from Frisby to Brisby, and common wisdom says it was to avoid connection with the brand name of a certain “flying disc.” I suspect common wisdom is right, whether that was a legal move necessitated by trademark concerns or simply a worry that her name would make people laugh.

Then much more than now, it was tough to get an animated movie on the theater screen if you weren’t Disney. (This was also before VCRs were common, so there wasn’t even a direct-to-video market.) But this is one of the few that managed it. Don Bluth and his team were helping to blaze a trail for non-Disney animation to be produced and released in the U.S.

3. Scattered Things
Evidently this movie was rated G by people who saw that it was a cartoon and didn’t bother to watch it. It includes vibrant red blood, a deliberate murder, another deliberate killing that was either an effort to save someone else or a bit of revenge (or both), and talk about torture and hearing the screams of laboratory animals at night. The main character is a widow whose husband’s death is the first thing you hear about in the movie. There’s also a quick curse word (spoken by one of the good guys, no less), and I have a suspicion it was thrown in by the filmmakers so the movie would be PG. To no avail.

The movie does an impressive job creating an air of menace and danger in multiple scenes with different threats. Mrs. Brisby is at the mercy of a whole lot of things, whether it’s larger animals or human decisions or illness affecting her children.

I thought the clumsy bird was a crow, but he’s just tiny compared to the cat. On the other hand, the movie—set in North America!—also shows a spider that’s three times the size of a mouse, so I think the animators were a bit unreliable regarding scale.

There’s a quick mention by Mrs. Brisby that her children are better at reading than she is—and while it’s true that learning as a child can be faster than learning as an adult, this is definitely a little nod to the fact that her husband was more than an ordinary mouse and has passed things on to their children.

I am always gripped by scenes of radiant transcendent power summoned by great emotional need to accomplish the impossible just when all hope is gone. And yet I can’t help feeling Secret of NIMH should’ve avoided mixing magic with the science fiction. The amulet, Nicodemus’s whirligig device that shows images from the past, and the rosebush vines that move and rearrange themselves are things I can’t square with the notion that the rats owe their secret world to the intelligence produced in them by medical experimentation.

Before I rewatched this movie, my memory had no doubt that Mrs. Brisby ends up with Justin, the captain of the guard. My memory is wrong. They’re clearly drawn to each other, I wasn’t inventing that, but there’s no hint that they become a couple once the action is over. Which is pretty reasonable but not typical for animated films.

Persephone Speaks

~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment 
phon-é is not phón-é
So my name does not say “voice,” 
And no one listens to me.

Not my father, Ungreat Zeus, who feels empowered to barter me away
(Both the first time and the second)
He who endorsed the rule that if I ate, I stayed
Perverting the laws of hospitality
And turning them to a curse.
Zeus Xenios, what a lie.

Not Hades, my uncle-husband, who showed me pretty jewels, indeed,
But did not ask if I wanted them enough to stay eternally
Or offer me a choice to come or leave
But imprisoned me from love of my face and shape
Without a thought of what might be my will.

Not my mother, who has never questioned whether I desired to be always at her side
Maiden, decorous, flower-bouquet for her to hold and display
A fragrance for her to delight in
Whatever I might want besides
She was right to protest my capture
But I should like to ask
If she became so angry on my account
	Or on her own.
No use to plant the question, when for me she has no ears.

Then those two brats from Athens
(Or the one was from some other city, it hardly matters which)
Came believing they could steal me from the Underworld
Such fools
And worse believed it did not matter what I wanted or could do
That I either would not or could not stop them
Or have any say in the business of my unending life.
A trinket to be fought for and won by mortal clods:
They actually thought me that.
“Wife,” said Hades, for he must ever grind that in,
“Two human louts have come to abduct you
And are even now roaming the caves in search of this throne-room,
To find you and take you back with them.”
While he described the inventive torments he meant for them to have in place of me,
I thought more and more of what those men must have thought and felt.
And grew a burning rage.
Lava flows beneath the earth as well as rising through volcanoes.
My hands gripped the sides of the onyx throne,
and I looked at my chair here.
Yes, this seemed right.
Let them become what they thought me to be.
I rose and left the throne-room,
To set the trap for those two “heroes.”
A bench prepared, bare stone, but made to look inviting
And there the two mortals, weary from hopeless searching, sat
And forgot everything.
Memory will return if they simply rise,
But there is no reason that they ever should.
They have no thoughts with which to form an intent
No will to carry one out
No voice in which to ask for aid
And none around who would give it.
Let them sit.
Their clothes may rot and fall away, but their bodies will not age or die
And their minds shall forever be empty.
And the longer they remain, the more the stone will cling to flesh
For it should be a part of them
Inseparable
Till no one knows where they diverge
Or can imagine one without the other.

When Hades, uncle-husband, saw what I had done,
His smile grew sour, cheated of the devious torments he had wanted to inflict,
But he said only,
“Ah well! This works too!”
So there the two men sit, empty vases on a shelf
To be looked at and amused by.
While I sit full of other things.