Forget Nausicaa. This is where Ghibli really begins. Takahata may not have the mass international appeal of Miyazaki, but he is at least as important to the Ghibli story. With this, his first movie as director, Takahata shows how pervasive his influence is on all the work that came after him, even if his films tend to be much less conventional now. Here, too, we see the union of Takahata, as director, and Miyazaki, as key animator and ‘Scene designer’, which according to information on the Internet really means ‘Creative Consultant’. This is Takahata doing the heroic boy’s adventure, with a young hero called Horusu (Hols/Horus) fighting against an evil demon, and it starts in a way that is pure Miyazaki-helmed Ghibli, with a boy battling wolves only to be interrupted by a huge stone golem. But Takahata tends to be more subtle than the man who now overshadows him, and the film evolves into a curious study of village life and an angst-riddled relationship.
Now, these are all things that are very familiar from anime, to the extent that they could be called generic clichés. Horusu himself is the bold, simple type that can be seen in Pazu and Ashitaka, not to mention the likes of Goku, Naruto and Luffy (if you add in a fair bit more clownishness). But it’s important to remember this film is from 1968 – and that it was a disaster, resulting from a huge struggle between director and studio.
So what are the major influences here? Osamu Tezuka, certainly – you can see how Ghibli’s house style has evolved from his via this movie, and some of the background characters look like they’re right out of Tezuwan Atomu – though others are more reminiscent of European comics like Asterix and The Smurfs. Disney is more clearly influential here than in later Ghibli productions, with talking animals (a cute sidekick and then two with an angel/devil-on-the-shoulder dynamic) and a tall, skinny, pretty goofy-looking villain who could have been from an early Disney film, as could the songs.
But what’s impressive is that the film really isn’t what I had expected. I expected tweeness, bad animation, poor plotting and a lack of emotional depth. And while all those issues were present, Horusu had so much more to redeem it. The middle section in the village is remarkable, and Takahata’s direction already feels like that of a European arthouse director, with the little intimate scenes, the concern with the everyday and even the random nudity, as well as a rather hallucinatory section. And while the idea of a major character having a dark side is by no means new, I’ve seen few movies aimed at younger kids that have such a tortured sympathetic character as Hiruda. Great stuff.
Other elements are mixed. The animation ranges from terrible shots of Horusu almost motionlessly sliding down a hill on his bottom to some wonderfully fluid fights and a sequence that follows a great image of the surf breaking with a superb one of the sun behind Horusu’s back. There are also two complex scenes that just aren’t animated, a series of stills, a coloured animatic storyboard, presumably because with Takahata many months over schedule and unlikely to make their money back, Toei pulled the plug before these difficult-to-animate scenes with large numbers of animals were made. Some plotting is too brisk – Horusu just gets told where to go and what to do by the people he runs into, so there’s no real sense of a coherent, driving plot, and more than once, a small child is disappointed and upset only for it never to be mentioned again and them to be as friendly as ever afterwards.
It certainly doesn’t have the epic scale of Mononoke or the intimately recognisable characters of Mimi-o Sumaseba, but for its time, its budget and its significance on the world of anime, as well as for just being plain fun to watch, I recommend it.
(originally written 19.2.07)
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