バケモノの子 / Bakemono no Ko / The Monster’s Child / The Boy and the Beast

Kimi no Na Wa has changed a lot of things in the anime scene. Until it took Shinkai Makoto to his new elevated place as the perceived successor to Miyazaki Hayao, it was Mamoru Hosoda who looked to be able to take that title, and indeed remains in my view the more established and consistent of the two.

And while not the smash hit of Kimi no Na Wa, this movie made a big stir in Japan. It was well-marketed and well-received, with strong box office figures and positive critical response. It also seemed like my sort of movie, a coming-of-age tale about an acerbic young lad taken in by a monster to train in martial arts.

Yet it didn’t have the resonance that Kimi no Na Wa is enjoying, nor was it a breakthrough. Anime fans enjoyed it, but it didn’t go much beyond that. And having seen it now, I think that’s appropriate. There’s a lot here that works very well, a lot of heart and a lot of imagination, but it falls well short of Summer Wars and remains too distant and too by-the-numbers to inspire love from a wider audience.

The story is simple – little 9-year-old Ren runs away from home after his mother’s death. His father is missing and he dislikes his guardians, so becomes homeless. Fortunately for him, he’s spotted by Kumatetsu, a powerful but irresponsible beast creature, and taken in on a whim as a disciple. Taken in as a lonely human in a world of beasts, with a monkey and pig advising him and giving something of an echo of Journey to the West, Ren is given the new name Kyuuta and eventually becomes formidable. Unsurprisingly, he’s not the only one with a similar background, though, and might have to confront the darkness in the hearts of others.

The core of the movie, the squabbling, eventual respect and finally strong bond between Kumatetsu and Ren, works very well. They argue, come to understand one another, and finally rely on each other to be complete. Unfortunately, the rest of the story hung around this core doesn’t cohere nearly so well. The love story is tepid and slow, Kumatetsu’s rival doesn’t get the development he needs and the antagonist is much too remote and peripheral to carry a meaningful climax to the story. There’s also no big pay-off here: it essentially feels like Ren ends up turning his back on everything that makes him who he is, and there was way more scope for examining how he could find a unique place in the human world afterwards.

Ultimately, unlike Summer Wars or The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, and even more so than Wolf Children, the film doesn’t manage to clearly stamp its identity throughout its running time, and thus falls short of hitting hard and being truly memorable. If he wants his Studio Chizu to be a new powerhouse, Hosoda is going to have to up his game – especially with Shinkai now a few steps ahead.

おおかみこどもの雨と雪 / Ōkami Kodomo-no Ame to Yuki / Wolf Children Ame and Yuki / The Wolf Children’s Rain and Snow

Six years after The Girl Who Leapt Through Time transformed him from a director of Toei anime episodes and occasional feature-length tie-ins to an interesting new light in the world of anime auteurs, and three years after Summer Wars cemented his place there, Hosoda Mamoru's latest film is very characteristically his work yet subtly different. Honestly, I don't think it was the best choice of story if he wanted to take up the place left vacant by Kon Satoshi's tragic passing as an anime feature director second only to Miyazaki Hayao in being prolific, recognisable and internationally well-known, but I liked its quirkiness and the way it took its somewhat silly premise and put it through the filter of calm, day-to-day Ozu-like struggles with everyday life, aligning it much more closely to Takahata than to Miyazaki in the Ghibli sphere of reference. As a result, unlike his previous two films this one doesn't have a very conventional third act of action and triumph, but rather a steady progression and comparatively open-ended conclusion.

Ookami Kodomo follows the life of quiet but remarkably strong-willed Hana, who meets a strange, taciturn but ruggedly handsome young man attending her university lectures even though he isn't a student. Though he is initially gruff and unfriendly, she perseveres in helping him and their mutual desire to learn underpins a brief but convincing romance that in minutes was in my book much more convincing than the whole first Twilight book. Fittingly for that comparison, it turns out that the boy is in fact a werewolf, perhaps the last of his kind. The couple's romance progresses quickly and they soon have two children a year apart, who they look out of the window and imaginatively call 'Yuki' (snow) and 'Ame' (Rain). 

Sadly and perhaps inevitably, their father soon dies in an accident and the earnest human girl is left to raise two children who have both inherited their father's ability to turn into wolves. Here, the film takes its interesting turn away from the horror/supernatural romance that is so overdone in current media, and instead becomes about a mother raising two children alone who are very difficult for her to deal with. Eventually she decides she can't cope with living with such a secret in a dense urban area and moves to a secluded, run-down house in the countryside. This of course has its own hardships, until in a pleasant echo of Only Yesterday the city girl learns with the help of locals to work the land. Those seeking action may find this the dullest part of the film, but personally I found it the highlight, with a focus on the characters' humanity and a wonderful gruff patrician character. 

As time passes in this new life, the focus shifts to the kids. I very much liked the way that at first, they defied gender roles and then later, they defied what could have been expected of them from their temperaments as young children. Yuki is a boisterous tomboy who throws tantrums, delights in gathering disgusting things and has trouble hiding her wolfish side, while Ame is an adorably wet little boy who is constantly moaning, frightened of everything and seems likely to be the one who sublimates his wolf side. Yet going to school, Yuki starts wanting to fit in with her feminine peers and experiences an adorable puppy love - appropriately enough - that ties her to her human side, while a closer tie with animals and eventually a kind of mentorship from a wise old fox leads Ame to become the oddly detached, far more lupine one. 

The transition into maturity is marked with a gradual change in art - cutesy little wolf-kids with somewhat silly animal forms that retain their hairstyles grow less and less human. There's some drama with severe weather towards the end, but really it's something of an artificial attempt at a conclusion and the fact is the story just hints at the future rather than concluding strongly. If there's a flaw here, it's that the film doesn't have a storyline that hooks, only an intriguing concept played with gently. It's something very different in the werewolf genre, and could be interpreted as an allegory for mixed-race parenting (albeit would suit that very clumsily), and hints at a new maturity for Hosoda without quite finding the right balance just yet. 

That said, I loved the production - I very much liked the designs, the soft music, the restrained voice acting (though a scene where the siblings fight as wolves is a bit clumsy), the focus on gorgeous backgrounds with the characters generally occupying less space on screen than is typical in anime, and the characterisation. I was even somewhat unsettled that in the credit sequence, key snapshots from the story were disproportionately the same ones I'd chosen to take for my review quite without my knowledge. 

This is a step towards Hosoda becoming a more interesting, perhaps more cerebral filmmaker, and I'm interested to see where he goes with his new Studio Chizu - founded for this film but as yet more subsidiary of Madhouse than standalone studio, though that may already have come to an end by the time his next release comes out. Coming with him are key personnel like Sadamoto Yoshiyuki, the famed Evangelion character designer who also worked on The Girl who Leapt Through Time and Summer Wars, and Hosoda’s usual screenplay collaborator now working on the live-action Kiki’s Delivery Service Okudera Satoko. There’s no faulting the calibre of this staff, but ultimately the film just felt unsatisfying. It needed either a stronger story or to fully take the plunge and leave behind anything that could be considered childish to go entirely for the arthouse angle, because the place it sits just now doesn't quite have the strengths of either. 

デジモンアドベンチャー / Digimon Adventure (Digimon movie 1)

I watched the first Digimon movie in June 2007, and even then I’d had it sitting about for about three years before I got around to it, thinking I’d see the series first. No need, though – it was, after all, only twenty minutes long. Besides, it was the first Digimon anime to get released, on March 6, 1999 - one day before the series began.

I was very surprised by it, in fact. I had expected a silly, cheap, babyish piece of animation much like the first episodes of the series. Instead, I found that it was much closer in mood to Tonari no Totoro than to the series, and nicely animated too. It would be something you could show to non-anime fans with little embarrassment, I wrote – unlike the first episodes of the main Digimon series.

And besides, it was the directorial debut of Mamoru Hosoda, acclaimed director of Summer Wars and The Girl Who Leapt Through Time – not that I knew this at the time. And while the Digimon series is ultimately about crudely-drawn juveniles who get cutesy little monsters that eventually evolve – or, rather, digivolve – to fearsome fighting machines in a fantasy world, this is about two very little kids who find and care for a mysterious creature that eventually helps them avert a disaster in their own city. It’s got the kind of charm and humanity it took the series itself many months to find, and all in a very short running-time. Oh, and let us not forget the superb use of Ravel to accompany the action.

It’s a little unfair to treat the first Digimon movie as a pilot for the series, because in all honesty, it’s better than Digimon generation 1 ever managed to be again. If the entire series had been like this, we would have had a very, very different series overall.

(Expanded from original impressions written 8.6.07)

One Piece Movie 6: オマツリ男爵と秘密の島 / Omatsuri-danshaku to Himitsu no Shima / Baron Festival and the Secret Island

The sixth One Piece movie was rather different from what I had been expecting. It had a weird, weird art style, which put me in mind of the episodes of Naruto where the art gets really sloppy so that the animation can be exceptionally fluid. Despite the parallel, though, and despite the movie budget here, the visual effect actually wasn’t so impressive and Oda’s exaggerated expressions really didn’t look right in the style – a problem compounded by them being held far too long. While it’s respectable to try something different, I was not very keen on the aesthetic, and ended up suspecting too much of the budget went on the impressive CG – because most of the One Piece movies have superior animation and art.

On the other hand, the plot grew from something really unimaginative (The Davy Back Fight – the movie!) into something very dark, with some genuinely nightmarish visuals. Some of the decisions made towards the end were quite brave…but it’s still probably been the One Piece movie I’ve enjoyed least.

Only later did I discover that this was the first feature film directed by Hosoda Mamoru, who only a year later would make the beautifully-told and very nice-looking Toki-o Kakeru Shoujo and then the stunning Summer Wars. He had previously only worked on episodes of Ojamajo Doremi and Digimon, as well as the first two half-hour Digimon films. Despite the latter two plus a third from another director being truncated into ‘Digimon The Movie’ for the West, this was his first feature-length work as a director.

Well, I can’t say I’m not pleased he got the chance. He’s a big star now. I just wish I’d liked his One Piece film more.

(Expanded from impressions, 29.5.07)

時をかける少女 / Toki-o Kakeru Shoujo / The Girl Who Leapt Through Time

Toki-o Kakeru Shoujo made a big splash in the anime community, and even some small ripples in the Japanese mainstream. A tiny wave even reached the UK’s arthouses, and thus today I got to see the charming little film on a big screen, albeit not one any bigger than a home projector system would give me, and with an annoying kid who couldn’t chew with his mouth closed, a rather poor flickery transfer and strange subtitles made up of individual strokes you could see crossing over one another colouring the experience.

Such minor complaints about the cinema itself can’t detract from how good the film is, however. It may not be as lush visually as Ghibli’s most ambitious films, but it equals some of their subdued and mature efforts, like Mimi-o Sumaseba and Omohide Poroporo, and has some really excellent visual moments: the final leap through time, for example, or some of the wonderful background animations. At one point, two girls push a third to approach the boy she likes in a piece of charming and hilarious silent comedy done in the background of a scene.

The story is the kind of thing that only anime develops along the lines we see here, a zany idea treated very seriously and made believable, even with increasingly bizarre twists. A girl discovers she can ‘leap’ through time, going back to replace her previous self, making her effectively able to live through an experience and then change it entirely. Although this could lead to a typical sci-fi story along the lines of Quantum Leap or Bill and Ted, because our heroine Makoto is too naive and pure, or possibly too lacking in imagination, to do anything but sweet things like repeating her time in the karaoke room or retake a test she did badly on, she never abuses her new power. Of course, things get more complicated when her two male best friends begin to show an interest in her and in other girls, and her life gets more confusing as their relationships get more and more convoluted by her attempts to get things just perfect.

Drama becomes heightened as Makoto has to encounter life-and-death situations and there are some superb moments where Makoto and the audience realise what is about to happen with grim inevitability while those in the situation are still unaware. The relationship drama is really top-notch, with both boys sympathetic, tomboyish Makoto absolutely adorable and even the minor characters developed just enough, raising fond smiles.

The animation is not superb but it is solid, the aesthetic appealing and the character designs attractive. The music works well and the voice actors have a freshness to their performances reminiscent of Bokura ga Ita. It just about pulls off its more high-faluting parts and there’s only one real problem with the conclusion, which without giving much away is that you can say, ‘Well, just get more once you go back and you can keep going back and forth.’ The story works well and keeps up a brisk pace, although there is a little too much of a lull in the final act between the film’s major climax and its conclusion, which is a bit of a shame.

Nonetheless, this film is cute, well-crafted, mature and still very entertaining. Highly recommended.

(orginally written 29.9.08)

サマーウォーズ/ Summer Wars

Without paying special attention to him, I’ve been watching works that Hosoda Mamoru has directed for many years. I was impressed by the early Digimon short movie he directed, finding it surprisingly artistic and mature, given how the franchise developed, while not being so keen on his One Piece movie, which in spite of some clever and brave development of a simple plot disappointed me with its slapdash visuals and unsatisfying conclusion.

Almost two years ago, now, I went to see his Toki-o Kakeru Shoujo, or The Girl Who Leapt Through Time, which had made quite an impression on the arthouse crowd. It wasn’t perfect, but I liked it very much, enjoying the characters and iconic setting. With Summer Wars, though, Hosoda has become a major player on the international animation scene, and it will probably be he who takes Madhouse from successful television studio to huge filmmakers.

Its brilliance is in blending three elements: a sophisticated family saga with a huge cast that actually made me think of Ozu, a cute and goofy teenaged romance story and an exaggerated, high-stakes action story set in an online world. It’s very hard to make such disparate elements gel, but they do, brilliantly. There is some overly coincidental plotting, significant figures just happening to be in the family, there clearly could have been better ways to make the antagonist feel ‘challenged’ when a whole world is involved, the morality of providing a password to someone malicious could have been explored more and the trouble with an imagined online world is that too much just seems arbitrary, but none of these things really detract from the deft way a world is built up, the elements balanced perfectly.

Kenji was a very likeable protagonist, Natsuki was more than a pretty face, and I found Kazuma adorable. The story allowed for great humour, joy and sadness that just about managed not to be hollow and exploitative. Wonderful little touches like the use of a woman watching the Koshien to echo the highs and lows of the main story, the chorus of ‘KITA!!’ when King Kazuma appears and the power of collaboration made this a deeply satisfying, moving film.