#AGhibliADay #NausicaäOfTheValleyOfTheWind

As promised, we watched Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind today, and it is still my favorite Studio Ghibli film, even though it's technically not a Studio Ghibli film (it was released in 1984, a year before Ghibli's official founding; however, it has since been grandfathered in and now carries the Ghibli branding).

Everything about this movie is fantastic: its setting, its characters, the animation, its main plot, and its central conceit.

Today, instead of giving a plot synopsis and a half-assed analysis like usual, I thought I would instead relate interesting factoids about the movie, like the one above about this technically not being a Ghibli film. We'll call that 1.

2. Hideaki Anno animated the Giant Warrior/God Soldier scene near the end of the film. He would go on to animate even more giant, rotting things that shot lasers out of their faces in Neon Genesis Evangelion.

3. The Nausicaan aliens in Star Trek: The Next Generation are named after the title character. Bonus: Captain Jean-Luc Picard had his heart stabbed by a Nausicaan; Sir Patrick Stewart, who played Picard, also voiced Yupa in the 90s English dub.

4. Because this was an original story and not adapted from any existing source, Miyazaki wrote a manga so he could get it produced.

5. The film has a World Wildlife Fund logo at the very beginning, praising it for Nausicaä's repeated attempts to save the giant insects from other humans.

6. There are over 56,000 traditional animation cels used in this movie.

7. Yupa entering the Valley of the Wind at the beginning of the film was inspired by JRR Tolkien's description of Gandalf entering Hobbiton at the beginning of The Fellowship of the Ring (Peter Jackson may have then copied this scene for his adaptation of the book, but that's pure speculation on my part).

8. There is an aviation group in Japan who has made a real-world version of Nausicaä's glider. Ghibli wanted to officially back them, but the group declined in case somebody got hurt; they didn't want anyone to hold Ghibli responsible. They have since made a successful test flight.

9. Only 263 colors were used in this film, which may explain why some viewers think Nausicaä isn't wearing any pants when in her blue outfit. The color of her pants just happen to be very close to the shade of her skin.

10. Miyazaki was so angry at the original English version of Nausicaä (called Warriors of the Wind), which had huge edits and re-writes, and cut about a half hour from the total run time, that when piece of shit rapist Harvey Weinstein asked to make similar edits to Princess Mononoke ten years later, Miyazaki stormed out of the meeting. Several days later, Ghibli head Toshio Suzuki sent a katana sword with the words "NO CUTS" engraved on its blade to piece of shit rapist Weinstein's office. The film was released uncut in the US. Miyazaki commented on the incident in an interview, smiling and saying, "I defeated him." This is my favorite Miyazaki story ever.

If you have, for some reason, never watched this movie, I urge you to do so as soon as possible. It is legitimately awesome.

#AGhibliADay #OceanWaves

Today, we watched Ocean Waves, a movie neither of us had seen before. It's a story about Taku, now in college, reminiscing about Rikako, a girl he crushed on during high school, as he goes back to his hometown for a reunion.

And man, we hated it.

Rikako is a mid-year transplant from Tokyo, and she quickly gains the attention of most of the boys, but especially Yutaka, Taku's friend. Yutaka is instantly smitten, but can't work up the courage to confess his feelings. Rikako, meanwhile, manages to be rude, annoying, and outright mean to almost everyone at her new school. She lies to Yutaka and Taku both to get some money from them, and then lies to her only friend, Yumi, in an attempt to go back to Tokyo to see her father, whom she blames her mother for divorcing. Taku ends up going with her instead of Yumi because Yumi really didn't want to lie to her parents. On the trip, Rikako treats Taku quite badly.

And he still somehow ends up falling for her because I guess boys are idiots.

We are supposed to feel sorry for Rikako. Her parents have divorced, and she's been forced to move out to the country after living in Tokyo her whole life. But it's very hard not to intensely dislike her because she has almost zero redeeming qualities. She's a liar, a manipulator, she lashes out at people who try to help her, she's mean and nasty, and she slaps Taku twice for absolutely no reason beyond the fact that she's angry at what he's saying (even though the second time he was trying to be nice).

I try very hard not to give up on movies. If I don't like something in the first 15 minutes or so, chances are pretty good I'm gonna not like it by the end, but even so, I give them a chance, I give them the benefit of the doubt. People spend a lot of time and effort to make art, and the least I can do is experience it in full, and then decide if I like it or not. While I did finish Ocean Waves, it also reminded me strongly of one of the few films I quit after the first 5 minutes: My Sassy Girl. Both of these stories are about mostly nice, and mostly stupid boys who fall for girls who are just absolutely awful to them. The boys do all these things for the girls, and the girls just walk all over them. Taku stands up for himself more than the protagonist of My Sassy Girl does (again, I quit after five minutes, but my friends continued watching it in my room and I've had reports 😛 ), but it's still an absolute chore to watch this ridiculous premise.

Towards the end of the film, Taku reminisces about various interactions he's had with Rikako in what's supposed to be a schmaltzy "oh look at all these great memories we have together" montage, but, I kid you not, all of these memories are of Rikako being a jerk and using Taku for various things. None of them are romantic or sappy in the least.

Maybe there was something lost in translation. Maybe, like Tales from Earthsea yesterday, something was lost in the adaptation (Ocean Waves was also adapted from a novel). But man, something was lost for damn sure.

We're watching Nausicaä tomorrow because we'll at least be certain we're getting a good movie this time 😛

#AGhibliADay #TalesFromEarthsea

Today we watched Tales from Earthsea, Gorô Miyazaki's first film and loose adaptation of Ursula K. Le Guin's third novel in the series of the same name.

This movie felt like it was all about the duality of the world. All the main characters contained opposing, yet complementary natures within them: Arren, the hero of the story, is a young prince fleeing his homeland after murdering the King his father; Sparrowhawk is the Archmage of the land, but also a simple farmer; Tenar is a simple farmer herself, but also a "witch" who can brew cures; and Therru isn't just a regular girl. And everybody has a name and a true name.

The film even begins with a direct quote from the first Earthsea book:

"Only in silence the word,
only in dark the light,
only in dying life:
bright the hawk's flight on the empty sky."

Sparrowhawk says Ea is out of balance. This is causing crops to fail, dragons to appear closer to human settlements and kill each other, and darkness to cover the land. Sparrowhawk is trying to discover what is causing the imbalance, and finds Lord Cob, the main antagonist, attempting to flee the duality of life and death by gaining eternal life. But in becoming immortal and banishing death, he would also banish life. We cannot really live if we cannot die the film tells us (also Sparrowhawk and Therru, in case the rest of the film was too subtle 😛 ).

Behind the scenes, Hayao Miyazaki was supposed to direct the film, but he was busy with Howl's Moving Castle (another adaptation of another fantasy novel). Instead, Studio Ghibli head Toshio Suzuki decided Hayao's son Gorô should direct, against Hayao's wishes. Gorô would use not just material from Le Guin's book, but also from his father's manga Shuna no Tabi. Production was reportedly tense with father and son not speaking throughout even though Le Guin was told Hayao would oversee Gorô's work (she had only agreed to let Ghibli adapt if Hayao were directing, and was also disappointed to learn Gorô was instead).

When the film came out however, Hayao was happy with it, while Le Guin was not.

Dualities are all around and cannot be escaped from.

I'm not sure I enjoyed this film as much as other Ghibli films I've seen, but I didn't hate it either. I feel like the younger Miyazaki just isn't as good as his father or Takahata.

#AGhibliADay #TheCatReturns

 Today we watched The Cat Returns, a shorter Ghibli film neither written nor directed by either Miyazaki or Takahata, a first for both of us. I guess I knew intellectually that there were other filmmakers at Ghibli Studios, but I was still surprised to see neither man attached to this film.

This is a fun adventure movie set mostly in a magical world. There are many shades of Alice in Wonderland here as Haru finds herself in the Cat Kingdom because she was a brave girl who saved a cat about to be run over. That cat turned out to be the Cat Prince Lune, and his father the Cat King wants to show his gratitude in a myriad of ways, whether Haru likes it or not.

I won't discuss the plot too much because, like I said, this is a short film and you should all watch it for yourselves. I didn't know this when I started watching, but apparently this film is a sequel of sorts (or maybe a spin-off is a better word) to an earlier Ghibli film called Whisper of the Heart (neither the girl nor I have seen that one either). The Cat Returns features at least two characters (maybe three) from that earlier film, but not in any way that requires a watching of Whisper of the Heart (though now having read a bit about its plot, this may be tomorrow's Ghibli).

But yeah, this is a good movie. It's fun, it's funny, and it's short. I think kids would enjoy it a lot. All of the characters in the film are either funny or brave or both. There are no real villains, and everything is well resolved by the end.

#AGhibliADay #PrincessMononoke

Today we watched Princess Mononoke, one of Hayao Miyazaki's best fables about man versus nature. I had never seen this before, but the girl had, many years ago.

Like Shigeru Miyamoto, another great Japanese creator, Miyazaki has long used nature as a main source for his seemingly inexhaustible creativity. You can point at almost any Miyazaki film and see how important nature is to the story he is trying to tell, from Nausicaä to My Neighbor Totoro, from Pom Poko (which he neither wrote nor directed, but was his idea) to Princess Mononoke, and beyond. Nature, and humanity's role in it or against it, is the central idea in most of his stories.

Princess Mononoke begins with humanity in opposition to nature. Lady Eboshi, probably the most interesting character in the whole film, is strip mining the forest, killing all the animals, gods, and spirits who get in her way. She doesn't care about any of them; she only cares about the iron under the ground. She's cutting down entire forests. But she also saves lepers and prostitutes, and gives them jobs and a home in her Iron Town. The population of Iron Town is fiercely loyal to her. She's saved them all from hard, mean lives, after all.

Near the end of the film (which I won't discuss in too much detail because of spoilers), Lady Eboshi does something truly heinous and directly causes some really bad stuff to happen. But at the very end of the film, we are supposed to believe she has learned her lesson, even as she suggests she is going to continue doing what she was doing "better than ever".

It's difficult to truly hate Lady Eboshi, and it's even harder to say she's the villain of the piece. Yes, she's in direct opposition to the title character for pretty much the entire film, but she's not a wholly bad person. From her viewpoint, she's just making sure her people can survive, and even thrive. Why should these enigmatic gods and spirits get in the way of giving her people better lives?

Ultimately, the correct answer is that everything is better when man and nature coexist and work together, as is always the case in a Miyazaki film (and most likely real life too).

Video Game Round-Up! - April/May 2020

Welcome to another Video Game Round-Up! I did not play a lot this past month for three main reasons: 1) We had to finish writing the first draft of the next Sherlock Sam; 2) I have been watching a lot of classic movies in my free time instead of playing video games because a friend has been challenging us all to share our annual top 10 films lists, and I realized I have watched a woefully small amount of pre-1980 films; 3) The girl continues to bogart the Switch for Animal Crossing, so I can’t use it for anything else :P

The world is still extra dangerous right now thanks to the coronavirus, and I haven’t left the house since my last Video Game Round-Up! I might be developing a bit of agoraphobia, but I have been exercising a lot more in the house, and cooking a lot more (simple things, but still, way more than I was before all this). I keep finding new and interesting things to do in the house to keep me busy and sane, and sometimes that means less video games and more movies, or writing, or writing about movies :)

But enough about that, let’s get to the games!

#AGhibliADay #MyNeighborsTheYamadas

Today, we watched My Neighbors the Yamadas (a first for both of us), which is like the black sheep of Studio Ghibli films (at least the ones from the 20th century; I'm not 100% sure about the ones from this century) because it was so different. The subject matter is different (it's based on a comic strip), the format is different (it's a bunch of short vignettes instead of one longer narrative), and the art style is markedly different. No other Ghibli film, even now, looks anything like this (with the possible exception of The Tale of Princess Kaguya). It's very, very cartoony, all the characters are chibi-ized, there are often no backgrounds, and it looks almost like it was drawn with crayons. In short, it looks nothing like a Ghibli film. That's not a bad thing (I actually like this art style quite a bit), just prepare yourselves if you're expecting like Totoro or Mononoke.

But boy howdy is it hilarious. It's true that some of the jokes don't land, and some of the vignettes are actually a bit sad, but by and large, these vignettes are quite funny. Some had me howling with laughter to the point of not being able to breathe. My favorite joke, for those of you who have seen this before, is the shopping list joke between Mr and Mrs Yamada. I had to pause the movie and rewind because I was laughing so hard.

This is a great movie to watch right now. I think we all need a good laugh or two 😃