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Director: Isao Takahata
Screenplay: Isao Takahata
Voice Cast: Makoto Nonomura as
Shoukich; Shinchou Kokontei as Narrator; Yuriko Ishida as Okiyo; Akira Fukuzawa
as Ryutarou; Beichou Katsura as Rokudaime Kinchou; Bunshi Katsura as Tasaburou
Hage-tanuki; Gannosuke Ashiya as Inugami-gyoubu; Kobuhei Hayashiya as Ponkichi;
Kosan Yanagiya as Tsurukame-oshou; Nijiko Kiyokawa as Oroku-baba; Norihei Miki
as Seizaemon; Shigeru Izumiya as Gonta; Takehiro Murata as Bunta; Yorie
Yamashita as Otama
Viewed in Japanese with English Subtitles
With this, I have my first Studio Ghibli film review on the blog. It's
taken a while, but I had a sense of trepidation to tell an embarrassing truth,
unsure how exactly I'd cover work from a studio many people much more
professional as writers have covered in far greater detail and at length. As a
result, I've sadly not watched a Studio
Ghibli film in such a long time, to which this obscurer title in their back
catalogue makes a nice beginning to change this.
This is important in itself in
terms of what exactly I choose as, when most people think of Studio Ghibli, they're probably thinking
of Hayao Miyazaki and his films,
whose reputation exists outside of even anime fandom. Studio Ghibli had, to put it bluntly, tent poled itself around only
two directors, a history of figures who were one offs, one in Yoshifumi Kondōwho sadly died
prematurely after his film Whisper of
the Heart (1995) only a year later, and even Miyazaki's own son Goro,
who worked as a director at the Ghibli
Museum, before he worked on two films so far. Miyazaki himself is a
great film, a man whose tendency to retire only to return and his grumpy
opinions not denying him as one of the great auteurs in anime behind gems like Kiki's Delivery Service (1989). The
other, less praised as he should be, is the late Isao Takahata whose filmography in Ghibli is idiosyncratic. His films are much more unconventional,
even Pom Poko as his most accessible
for the company, and the one whose was arguably the most "adult" in
that he tackled very serious themes which might have gone over children's heads
even in a comedy like My Neighbour The
Yamadas (1999). He's known above all else for Grave of the Fireflies (1988) as devastating as you could get live
action or animated in dealing with Japan's place in World War II/The Pacific
War from the innocent bystanders' place, and for myself, Only Yesterday (1991) is one of my favourite films of any country
or form, an animated drama about a woman in her late twenties going back to the
countryside so idiosyncratic it took until 2016 to finally get a proper
American release when most of the company's back catalogue was already out.
Pom Poko envisions a premise we've probably had as a live action
film in which the animals in the wild decide to protect their land from the
development of human expansion. Here it takes a fascinating direction,
especially as he tells this environmental message from the perspective of
Japanese folklore. In Japan, foxes and tanuki (raccoon dogs) native to their
land were seen as shape shifters, to which Pom
Poko imagines the inevitable when said tanuki clash with the development of
Japan after it grew out of the ashes after losing the war to becoming continually
urbanised into the modern day. Told with a narrator, it doesn't go the
direction many would expect, where these tanuki first get acclimatised to
television and the joys of McDonald burgers when, to begin their war, they have
to relearn their ability to shape shift and learn what the human culture is
now.
That and, whilst we sympathise on
their side, their first initial acts involve causing vehicular accidents with
construction vehicles that lead to humans actually dying. This is taken further
into a level of complexity you'd never expect as the elders, upon their first
wins, still want to pray for the lost human souls that died in their war, even
if the young ones want to just celebrate. Takahata,
even for a film suitable for families, doesn't hide any of the issues that
arise in this subject, to imagine if the beasts of his country's folklore
actually exist and imagine them trying to adapt to the new era, the
matter-of-factness that they are of a different dying culture, a different
lore, but not negating the human characters either. Its poignant, not jumping
too far ahead but wanting to still reference much later, that one of the most
poignant scenes is two older men recounting drunk how they once believed in
such creatures, and no longer believe in them, even when the raccoons
eventually escalate to full scale yōkai mass haunting in the entire city of
Tokyo just behind them.
Even Hayao Miyazaki, whilst still an idiosyncratic filmmaker, worked in
territory that could gain mainstream acceptance more often, whilst it was a common
habit for Takahata to tackle
unconventional subject matters, the film not belying that these raccoons can be
killed on the roads or being caught in traps like regular animals, even in a whimsical
tone with plenty of slapstick humour. It can just also be frank; a lot of its
humour managing a delicate line in terms of the adult content without being
explicit, jokes about mating season and forced vows to keep the population
under control the most prominent example of this. It's a film complex in its
message, an environmental message thrown in the front and centre, but with a
light hearted tone still streaks it in darkness. It's not a spoiler to reveal
that the raccoons will not succeed, because the world has already changed, but
how they adapt over the feature length to a very different, vastly growing
world of human metropolis is the real story at hand, right down to the foxes
having monopolised hostess bars when one is introduced. It's a literalisation
that can even be found in real life in how even normal non-magical animals like
crocodiles to badgers have had to adapt to human civilisation, be it in the
streets or under the waterways, and have done so with success in adaptation.
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In terms of production, it's a very handsome one, contrasting beautiful idyllic countryside and urban environments with the best in elastic physics. Studio Ghibli are always held as giants for animation quality let alone the quality of their stories with very good reason, this a bar higher than most I have reviewed so far. When transformation is introduced, the raccoons already able to turn into regular raccoons are now learning to turn into almost everything, seeing the best of hand drawn animation as a result.
And of course, this film is explicitly
about mythology, especially as the tanuki are lead to deciding to scare off the
humans with hauntings, a new playfulness found throughout the film. The entire aspect
of folklore involved is in depth, the variety of ghosts and goblins they turn
into over vignettes enough to be almost horror at points, like for the poor
police officer chased by faceless ghosts, whilst never becoming indulgent. It is
esoteric without knowledge of the country's folklore but worthwhile nonetheless.
It also has a serious edge, as mentioned, of the environmental message being
intertwined in a past lost to urbanism - which might've come off as
conservative weren't it not for the 2010s bringing about a lot of ideas, even
fads, for past ideals in behaviour regardless of politics.
A huge aspect of the film is in
knowledge, whilst made after the economic bubble crash, that this is made in a
country which went through a rapid growth after World War II to a huge
industrial giant, the sense here that the scenes of countryside literally being
removed by god-like deities for new towers a poignant one of the potential loss
at hand, or at least a coldness to the new world. It's expressed in a scene near the end where probably the
most effective thing that can be done, when a mass haunting get hijacked as an
amusement park advertisement, is to conjure the past where Tokyo was more green
with wooden houses, evoking a past even lost to nostalgia and distorted to it
without the bustle of the current day. Even the fact the film ends with a
tanuki talking directly to the audience, to not harm creatures like them, is a
poignant one, coupled with a character going through a human existential crisis
about urban drudgery, emphasising this nuisance with the message.
The lack of simplistic to this
message was probably why the film is much more obscure than other Ghibli
titles. There was of course the entire issue that, part of Japanese folklore,
that the tanuki have giant testicles,
which is shown and means we have a Studio
Ghibli film in existence with genital humour, as they can be expanded, inflated
to gigantic proportions and at one point used to crush police during a night
skirmish between the sides. It's certainly a cultural tick that doesn't
translate but stands out as fascinating as everything else. In general, Pom Poko is apt for Isao Takahata's reputation, of more
adult work which could still be shown to children, even if Grave of the Fireflies would traumatise adults as much, with
incredible animation that could also experiment with new forms, the time My Neighbours the Yamadas took to be
made from having to create a watercolour aesthetic with digital. This is
neither to dismiss Miyazaki, or the
rest of Studio Ghibli's output
either, but in lieu to how most of the studio's work was fantasy or more adventure
based, whilst Takahata baring a few
exceptions was always more likely to follow drama. Even this, a fantasy film,
is a very dialogue heavy, funny and methodical work.
As the first Studio Ghibli film I have covered, it offers a perfect introduction.
It comes in a curious place where, as of 2014, Ghibli self-retired in a temporary way, Miyazaki claiming he was finally going to retire with The Wind Rises (2013), his dramatic
film, and Takahata passing in 2018. It
is on hiatus but still working on projects, connected to The Red Turtle (2016), a French-Japanese co-production and Ronia
the Robber's Daughter (2014-5), 3D cel shaded animated series helmed by Goro Miyazaki. Where the future lies
with the company is yet known, but as this is the first of their films I have
covered, I have at least three decades or so of Studio Ghibli films to see so I have plenty of time to catch up,
and a lot that I've never seen, making this a huge area now I'm finally here to
cover.
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