Tag: anime

Reflections: Only Yesterday (1991)

~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment
photo of the GKids blu-ray of the Studio Ghibli film Only Yesterday, showing an adult woman smiling widely while holding the hand of her unsure-looking younger self

Only Yesterday is a Studio Ghibli film likely unfamiliar to many anime fans. It’s based on a manga showcasing incidents from a girl’s life, but Ghibli director Isao Takahata added a parallel timeline so that now the film follows both 10-year-old Taeko, in 1966, and 27-year-old Taeko, who is remembering those incidents. The movie shares some distinctive Studio Ghibli hallmarks: the Japanese countryside, the balance of humanity and nature, looking back at the past, a focus on girls with strong feelings.

Adult Taeko is finding her way just as child Taeko did seventeen years earlier. As she says, this too may be a time of chrysalis, her life changing into something else. It isn’t simply that she’s past the age society says she should be married—or at least this causes her to look more broadly at her life to wonder if what she has is what she wants.

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Adult Taeko likes to present her stories of childhood as funny, but nearly all of them center around disappointment. There’s a lot to laugh at in the pineapple sequence, for one, but it’s still about something she looked forward to that turned out badly.

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Ghibli films tend to be firmly rooted in Japanese locations and culture, and Only Yesterday is intensely rooted there. This is a wonderful, engaging film, but if it’s your first glimpse of Japanese life you may be lost. And since half of the story is set in the 1960s, you need to be aware that families then were even more traditional (including unquestionably patriarchal) than they are now. The other half of the story, featuring adult Taeko, takes place at a time when women choosing to work instead of getting married still seemed odd to a lot of people and it was generally assumed that office women were just biding their time at work until they could acquire a husband.

One particular scene needs special attention. Plenty of people in the U.S. have a general idea that in Japan you take off your shoes when you enter a home. But the reverse could also be true: in a proper Japanese family you did NOT go outside with no shoes on. I don’t know all the standards for when it was fine to be shoeless (for instance, swimming), but as I understand it, leaving the house in socks but no shoes was considered indecent. It was not a question of whether your socks got dirty; in U.S. culture a parallel might be standing on your front lawn in your panties or perhaps wearing swim trunks to a fancy wedding.

At the same time, children always change shoes when they arrive at school, and no one is bothered by the exposure of sock feet for the few seconds it takes to do so, as we would be if a sixth-grader changed pants in the school lobby.

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Only Yesterday includes no spaceships, explosions, yokai, sword fights, or named attacks, and a common reaction is that there’s not a lot here that couldn’t be done in live action: a couple of minor special-effects shots, really, or you could just drop those elements. And yet without anything dynamic or flashy, the animation helps us understand the constant shifting back and forth of the timelines—this shot is back then; this shot is now. What’s more, the animation makes it seem okay that those are children from back then scurrying around in the event happening now, in a way I don’t think live action could manage very well. And the brief flashes of a pose (like Taeko strutting with a childish purse) or a sudden visual metaphor (like the baseball hitting the glove) are definitely the language of anime.

The film deserves a wider audience. It has tenderness between people getting to know each other and tenderness between a person and her younger self. It has someone talking about memories and finding out, from another person’s response, that maybe she misinterpreted that thing that happened seventeen years ago. It shows adults bonding over a TV show they loved as kids. It underscores the distinction between loving a place and knowing it, and notes that working at something on vacation is not the same as making it part of your life.

From lovingly depicted saffron fields to a wild shriek over a younger sister’s math score to a moment of first-love floating to a gentle, slowly developing relationship, Only Yesterday has a lot to offer anyone not in a hurry and willing to appreciate the less explosive events that shape us.

Reflections: Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989)

~ Not Alison ~ Leave a comment
photo of the cover of the GKids blu-ray release of the animated film Kiki's Delivery Service, showing Kiki smiling as she flies towards the left on her broom, with Jiji the black cat perching on her shoulderbag and birds flying by
Kiki, Jiji, and a radio

It is so strange to see Kiki in more colorful clothes at the start of the movie. I completely forgot this was in the film.

Kiki meets another witch who seems like a snob but nevertheless takes time to answer her questions; she might be showing off and acting fancy, but she isn’t mean or rude. Jiji says the cat is stuck-up, but later he says the same thing about a different cat and learns otherwise.

I notice this other witch’s dress isn’t actually black.

With all the other times characters act like snobs, is Kiki guilty of this too, in her early treatment of Tombo?

Osono: the warmth and comfort of being welcomed by a stranger into her kitchen to share a hot drink—not as a daughter but also not quite as a friend, seen as still a child but able to make your own decisions, given extra kindness and understanding but not indulgence. Later Ursula the painter does much the same, though as less of a stranger by then.

A silent baker shamelessly showing off—for the cat.

An artist in the woods, independent and following her own path; and, we learn, she has previously had to break from her old practice of copying other painters.

This aged dog is an artistic ancestor of Heen in Howl’s Moving Castle.

Kiki, you need to say thank you to that dog.

Kiki tells Osono she can’t make deliveries now, and seems genuinely afraid she’ll be asked to leave the bakery attic. She ought to know Osono wouldn’t throw her out, but she is still thirteen years old, not as grown-up internally as she often seems.

Someone you care for is in mortal danger, and there is no hope for him but you, and yet the one special thing that makes you able to help is the thing that isn’t working at that moment.

A dirigible captain who knows his priorities: speak to the boy to give him instructions and reassurance, not to the crew, who know their jobs and signed on for this task knowing the risks.

“There are still times I feel sad . . .”

By the end of the movie, Kiki still doesn’t have a special skill or focus. She flies . . . which is the basic thing that all witches do. This always leaves me dissatisfied; but perhaps the point is her acceptance that right now, being able to fly on a broom (and talk to a cat) is enough.

Miyazaki elements: of course the flying machines, and flight in general; the need to find a balance between the old ways and the new ways; expressive faces as always; and a girl with grim determination as invisible power courses around her, making her hair rise up.

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There is no single trigger for Kiki’s crisis of confidence. We see her repeatedly regret the way she must dress while other girls get to look nice. She encounters the other witch who has a speciality, while she does not. She’s learned that the town has rules and habits that don’t make allowances for witches. Staring in boredom out a window, she looks up with interest at the sight of a young man, only to watch him leave with a cheerful young woman in a light-colored dress. We can imagine, though it’s never hinted at in anything she says, that Kiki second-guesses her decision to leave home before preparing herself better and maybe learning some of those potions her mother wanted to teach her. Possibly she asks herself if she gets along better with adults than people her own age because she’s old-fashioned and behind the times. She admits that she doesn’t find flying fun. She ends up wet and bedraggled face-to-face with a well-to-do birthday girl in her party dress, who treats Kiki like an unimportant laborer—treatment in keeping with being a deliveryperson. Then she gets upset that Tombo is friends with this girl.

It isn’t as simple as Kiki wanting to be like the birthday girl, though, because it seems clear Kiki considers her rude and ungrateful, someone who speaks dismissively of a good and thoughtful grandmother. Kiki may want what the richer girl has, but she wouldn’t want to be her. Is it possible to have it both ways, being fashionable and glamorous but at the same time pure in heart and respectful and kind? Does being the second mean she’ll never be the first?

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I imagine this conversation as Kiki returns the broom at the end of the movie:

Kiki (bowing): Thank you so much for letting me borrow this!
Street sweeper: Oh, not at all! I’m glad it was useful!
Kiki: It’s a good broom. Please continue to take good care of it.
Street sweeper: Oh! Well, if you like it so much—you could have it!
Kiki: Oh, no! I couldn’t! It belongs with you. It wouldn’t like to be given away.
Street sweeper (looking with puzzlement at broom-head): Is that so . . . ?

My Neighbor Totoro (1988)

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photo of the cover of the GKids blu-ray release of My Neighbor Totoro, showing a girl holding an umbrella waiting at a bus stop in the rain beside a large fluffy blue-grey whiskered creature staring straight ahead; he has a leaf on his head
In Miyazaki’s original version of the story, there was only one girl, not a pair of sisters.

Totoro in a few words and phrases: joyful, playful, beaming with wonder, rich in emotion.

Miyazaki trademarks offered here: nature coexisting with humans and vice versa, touches of a not-hostile supernatural, flying in strong wind, active girls looking out for their family or community, facial expressions that communicate so much.

Both girls, but especially Mei, show absolute delight and eagerness when they encounter creatures and situations that would be scary if allowed to be. The girls boldly leap at things that are strange and new.

You can be good, kind, and respectful but still behave like a kid.

Satsuki is working so hard to fill the place her mother would: preparing bento boxes, tending the kitchen fire, fixing her little sister’s hair, reminding her father of things.

At the start you see the truck packed with belongings, and Miyazaki doesn’t forget to include, without drawing any special attention to them, a pair of umbrellas sticking out the top.

I wonder if Totoro’s breath smells like leaves and fresh grass. It must not smell bad, and is likely even pleasant, because Mei and Satsuki aren’t the least bit fazed when he exhales a gale on either of them.

I will always and forever love the catbus.

When your dog seems to be barking at nothing at all, it might not be a ghost—it might be a catbus.

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

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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.