Today we watched Pom Poko, a film neither of us had seen before, and I want to start by asking one simple question: what the fuck was that?
Pom Poko tells the story of a group of tanuki (magical shape-shifting raccoon dogs, in case you didn't know) trying to save their patch of forest from encroaching human urban development. This is billed as a comedy on IMDb and on Netflix, and while there are some funny bits (mostly in how often the tanuki do magic with their testicles; we'll circle around back to this, I promise), I am here to tell you this is not at all a comedy. There is tanuki-on-human terrorism, resulting in the death of many construction workers (we even got a scene of a draped body being taken out on a stretcher), there is human-on-tanuki murder, resulting in large piles of dead tanuki. And the tanuki lose so many times, in so many different ways, that by the time we get to the end and of course human urban development has continued unchecked, you're left wondering just how the tanuki didn't die from mass depression, though a group of them do basically commit suicide by sailing off in a golden ship that is actually just a tanuki's shape-shifted balls. I mean, the tonal shifts in this film gave me more whiplash than your standard Korean drama, and there is a lot of tonal whiplash in a standard Korean drama.
The design decisions made for this film are utterly bizarre. The tanuki don't have just one design, nor do they have two. They have three separate designs that they flit back and forth between. First, there is the regular, realistic raccoon design. This style is used whenever humans are nearby (and when they mate, I guess?). Second, there is the cartoony design. This is the design used through most of the film. A lot of the tanuki have clothes while in this design, and this is also when they do most of their shape-shifting. Third, there is the very simplistic cartoony style, where most of the details go missing and the they look almost rubbery. This style seems to be used when the tanuki are partying for whatever reason. Who decided this was a good idea? I found myself mostly wondering if there was an in-universe explanation for this (like, are the tanuki shape-shifting into these other forms?), or was it simply a stylistic choice? Again, who decided this was a good idea?
In folklore, tanuki are tricksters, and often use their testicles as their chief mode of magic. In various traditional Japanese art, tanuki are represented with quite frankly enormous testicles (please, do an Internet search; I take no responsibility for the resulting ads). Pom Poko decided to run with that like there was no tomorrow, and tanuki testicles are front and center in nearly every scene. Obviously, only males have testicles, so one would think that this would be a very male film (I mean, it is, but never mind). To counteract this, the film makes a point to say that, because the tanuki took a year off from mating, the women could also learn how to shape-shift since there were no babies to take care of (which is a whole other thing that I don't want to get into right now, but we all know that's some bullshit). There is an early scene, when many of the young tanuki are learning how to shape-shift from one of the elders. He has them seated on a carpet in front of him. But then, like a perverted magician, he reveals that they're not seated on a carpet at all. It's his transformed nutsack! Look, I know this is a cultural thing, but goddamn were there a lot of tanuki testicles. There were tanuki testicles transformed into balloons, there were tanuki testicles transformed into parachutes, there were tanuki testicles transformed into giant boulders, and yes, one particular pair of tanuki testicles was transformed into a golden ship which a bunch of tanuki sailed into the west like they were the goddamn Elves of Rivendell.
And yet, this is still somehow not the worst Ghibli film. Takahata, what were you taking when you made this, my dude?
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