Ghibli Month: An Aside

As Ace and I have been going through these movies—some for the first time, some for a review—the trends and tropes that are specific to a particular director really start to stick out. For all intents and purposes, the more trope-y of the two directors is certainly Miyazaki, but again I feel as though that has more to do with his intended audience than his lack of creativity or inability to simply write a different story.

For a younger audience, it’s certainly easier to equate a message or a lesson with a certain set-up, and with so many of his films being about coming of age, Miyazaki had to have known that. Reading our previous review on Spirited Away, you’ll remember that I’m not particularly fond of the “everyone’s gotta be in love” trope and Ace’s peeve is the “strong females have short hair” trope (from the Princess Mononoke post); however the trope I’m going to discuss today is a little less overt and has much less to do with the perception of gender. Rather, it’s much more intertwined with the actual emotional state of growing up.

Art by hyung86 @ Deviantart

Usually, character-wise, the set-up of a Miyazaki coming of age film is laid out as follows: protagonist has lengthened exposure to one person (the friend/love interest) while strengthening familial bonds or creating bonds with their pseudo-family, then a smattering of secondary friends and acquaintances (with the ‘antagonist’ usually being a situation rather than an actual person). However, to add a dash of the fantastical even in a completely normal setting, and to set the tone of the protagonist’s maturity journey, Miyazaki employs a character that is readily found in many other forms of media: the animal sidekick.

Ghibli Month: My Neighbors the Yamadas

Tsunderin: Previously in the series I had mentioned a movie being something out of the norm for Ghibli; a film that was seemingly an outlier in terms of artistic direction. I was so naïve back then.

Yes, call it the folly of shortsightedness, but I have been thoroughly corrected at the hands of Isao Takahata. I have seen My Neighbors the Yamadas. This isn’t necessarily a negative thing, nor is it a positive thing, it’s merely a different thing and something that I happen to like despite not understanding some of the choices that the director made. Takahata has simply presented us with a film that tries to be more like art than an actual film and in many ways this movie is comparable to modern art in particular: some people will draw more meaning from it than others, and others still will find it completely worthless as a film. I can see both sides—especially the ‘modern art’ side, since my high school-inherited bullshitting sense is going off the hook at all of the haikus separating some of the story.

So for those of you keeping tabs on this series, you should know that this is where I usually start the plot synopsis. This movie doesn’t have a plot. Thank you all for reading, have a nice day.

Ghibli Month: Whisper of the Heart

Tsunderin: Whereas Only Yesterday was the Ghibli film I wanted to see the most, Whisper of the Heart is indisputably the Ghibli film I love the most. I barely know any people that remember this film, let alone talk about it, but I think there’s something beautiful in its understated glory. Perhaps my love for this film is what helped me love Only Yesterday: the films share a soft-spoken nature and a realistic message about growing up and deciding your own path. But look at me already digressing before I say anything about the plot.

Ghibli Month: Pom Poko

Tsunderin: Welcome to the second month of Ghibli month! We start this glorious milestone with another environmental tale from Isao Takahata. I’m not going to lie: I went into Pom Poko expecting I would absolutely loathe it and why shouldn’t I? Pom Poko is generally considered one of Ghibli’s weaker films and I personally haven’t read or heard a single good thing about it. As thus, before actually forcing myself to sit down and watch it I was more than prepared to hate it. I was going to criticize the shit out of this film.

What did I think about it? Eh, it was decent.

Ghibli Month: Porco Rosso

Tsunderin: One upon a time many years ago, Adult Swim was hosting something they called the ‘month of Miyazaki’: a month of showing Miyazaki—I can’t remember if they threw in some Takahata to shake things up—films ass-early in the morning. I was bound and determined I was going to watch every single one. Every. One. I started out well, made it through Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away, but the film that followed them just couldn’t keep my attention at all and I conked out.

…Looking back, that wasn’t exactly impressive of me. Oh well, I’ve never been a hardcore movie watcher.

After giving it another shot though, I’ve found that Porco Rosso has really grown on me. Perhaps the reason I didn’t like it was because of the deeper intricacies that went right over the head of younger me or the fact that it didn’t star someone particularly likable (not as likable as Miyazaki’s previous heroines/heroes, at least). Or maybe it was because it starred a pig, because seriously, what would even make you think of that?

Ghibli Month: Only Yesterday

Out of all the films on Ghibli’s roster, Only Yesterday is the film I was looking forward to watching the most and is the one I’ve heard the least about. After finishing the ninety-some minute drama, I think I have a better understanding as to why I haven’t heard much.

The film focuses on Taeko, a Tokyo business woman and all-around city girl in her late twenties, who decides to take a ten day trip to the countryside where her brother-in-law lives. Taeko feels no ill for city life, nor does she hold any attachment to it: at her office job she feels as though she’s just floating by. She adores the country, but she doesn’t know why.

On her journey to Takase—a small farming town in the Yamagata Prefecture—she is slowly overcome with memories of her younger self, specifically her fifth grade self. She mentions that that moment in time was a defining moment in her life, a moment where she changed from one form of herself to another. In that same vein, she feels like this trip may be another one of those points in her life.

Ghibli Month: Kiki’s Delivery Service

Tsunderin: Realizing that he must have hit a sweet spot with his previous small-scope, through the eyes of a child film, Miyazaki once more set forth to capture another important point in everyone’s lives through his next film, Kiki’s Delivery Service. The target this time: coming of age. It can of course be argued that Castle in the Sky was also a coming of age story, but that part of the plot was overshadowed by a larger storyline as opposed to Kiki’s. Success of such things either relies on a series of stories in which the characters have a chance to grow slowly and more robustly, or a narrow focus. Again, Miyazaki chose to go with the latter.

Oh, My Pop-Culture Jesus: The Catholic Clergy and Pop Culture

Sometimes you watch TV shows, or movies and you see priests, bishops, monks, or nuns and often the portrayals of these people aren’t very favorable. Sometimes they are portrayed as downright evil.

Pictured Above: Pure evil!

Ghibli Month: My Neighbor Totoro

Tsunderin: Soooo yeah, as you can probably tell this definitely is not Grave of the Fireflies. It fact, it may even be its polar opposite. If you were looking forward to reading our review of the World War 2 tragedy, I apologize. Luckily for you, Ace has already written a piece on the film, so all is not lost!

As much as the film is beautiful and for all the impact and wonderful storytelling Isao Takahata gives us, there’s just a certain amount of emotion one has to be willing to expend when preparing to watch this movie. I think many people will agree with me in saying that Grave of the Fireflies is an important movie, a movie that everyone should see, but it’s difficult to watch it more than once. As someone who’s seen it twice, I think I’ve reached my quota of watching children starve to death.

So let’s move on to something a little more lighthearted and more expressive about the joys of childhood, instead. Yes, it’s My Neighbor Totoro (Tonari no Totoro), and if you know anything about me, know this: I fucking love Totoro. So does Ace. In fact, while Ace and I were both studying abroad in Japan we managed to find our way into a Ghibli store and met with the largest stuffed Totoro I’ve ever seen (she would have bought it, too, if not for the fact it wouldn’t have fit on the plane home). In short, this is the movie I was warning you for regarding concerns of our nostalgia getting the better of us.

Of course, even if you haven’t seen the film before, it would be difficult to not feel some sense of nostalgia for it as every aspect of the film works its hardest to portray a sense of comfort, a sense of safety that makes people long for the ‘good old days’.

Ghibli Month: Castle in the Sky

Tsunderin: After being critically underwhelmed by Nausicaa both story-wise and character-wise, I can’t exactly say I had high hopes for the next movie: the first movie the studio put out under the Ghibli name, Laputa: Castle in the Sky. Maybe it was something about the timing, a thought of mine that their golden era would have to wait until the 90’s to come shining through. I’m more than pleased to report that I was incorrect in this assumption. I loved this movie (though I’m a little disappointed that it took me this long to get around to watching it).

Although this movie and Nausicaa share a similar starting scene—someone is in danger of losing their life, but doesn’t through miraculous circumstances—that’s about where the similarities end. Sheeta, our protagonist who has just fallen from an airship while escaping her captors, ends up in a small mining town and in the care of a young miner boy, Pazu. Understandably, Pazu is interested in the amulet Sheeta wears as he’s quite certain that it was the one thing standing between Sheeta and a rather messy end; however, she immediately becomes entranced by his father’s photograph of a distant place: the kingdom of Laputa. The mythical castle is the sky is just that to most people, a myth, but Pazu knows that his father wasn’t lying (the picture’s right there, come on) and works tirelessly on creating a plane that will take him to the one place that will bring honor back on the memory of his father.