#AGhibliADay #TheCastleOfCagliostro

Today, we watched The Castle of Cagliostro, a film neither of us had watched before. In fact, neither of us has ever seen an episode of Lupin the III, the anime series the film is spun off from.

Also, we are 100% cheating today. This is not a Studio Ghibli film. It wasn't even grandfathered in like Nausicaä was. But it was Hayao Miyazaki's first feature film, so we're gonna pretend 😃

This film was blasted on its initial release for changing so much of what was considered established Lupin mythos. Lupin was a ruthless criminal and a womanizer, but in this film he's almost a gallant knight, saving princesses instead of robbing them blind. Fujiko was an overly sexualized woman for Lupin to fawn over and objectify along with the audience, but in this film she's a capable and badass secret agent who has all the best toys (she spends most of the film in a very conservative dress). Jigen is friendly and Goemon is funny here, things they are not in the regular series.

The art style here screams 70s anime. I am no expert by any stretch of the imagination, but I've seen stills and clips of things like Gatchaman and Space Battleship Yamato, and they all share a similar style. But Miyazaki goes and Miyazakis it up. The setting is the fictional and fantasized European principality of Cagliotstro, a Miyazaki signature. He has included fictional and fantasized European settings in many of his films, including Castle in the Sky, Kiki's Delivery Service, and Howl's Moving Castle. He also put a special focus on character's movements, something apparently not previously done in Lupin the III, but quite obvious in other Miyazaki films.

This is also the cartooniest film Miyazaki has ever done, probably due to inheriting the Lupin the III house style. Physics are completely ignored, characters are rubbery and invulnerable when required, and facial expressions can stretch as much as needed. Every other Miyazaki film's look is grounded in realism, even when depicting enormous insects, flying witches, or terrifying yokai.

And man, is this funny. I found myself laughing out loud at multiple points, not just at the cartoony elements (like Lupin swimming upstream or driving his car on the side of a cliff), but also at various quips and sight gags.

This is not a Studio Ghibli film. If it was, it wouldn't be the best, but it certainly wouldn't be the worst either. And without it, the genius of Hayao Miyazaki may have been forever hidden away from the world.

#AGhibliADay #GraveOfTheFireflies #MyNeighborTotoro

Today we watched the double header of Grave of the Fireflies and My Neighbor Totoro because that's literally the only way we can watch Grave of the Fireflies. We have watched both films before, and almost always together.

Grave of the Fireflies is bleak and unrelenting from the very beginning. There is no fantasy or whimsy here, though there is some magic, fleeting as it is. Seita does his very best to protect his much younger sister Setsuko from American bombs, from the truth of their parents' death, from their horrible aunt, and from hunger and malnutrition. He fails at all of them, not through any fault of his own, but simply by living through a really terrible time. Seita tries to shield Setsuko from the horrors of war as best as he can, and that's where the magic comes in. There are moments of true warmth and happiness, even as the bombs drop and the food runs out and the adults behave horribly.

In contrast, My Neighbor Totoro is almost entirely fantasy and whimsy. From the moment Satsuki and her younger sister Mei see the first group of soot-spreaders, there are smiles and laughter from both girls. The adults are all nice and cheerful, helping and feeding them. Totoro and the Catbus are adorable (in an occasionally horrifying way?) and very, very helpful. There is only one moment of possible danger, when we think Satsuki and Mei's mother might have gotten sicker, and then when Mei goes missing, but this is used mostly as a way to give us more whimsy and fantasy. Satsuki asks for and receives Totoro's help, who immediately bounds through his giant camphor tree to call on the Catbus, who immediately takes Satsuki to Mei, and then both of them to see their mother, who is perfectly fine after all.

I studied literature at university, and one of my professors once told our class the difference between a comedy and a tragedy was simple: a comedy ended in a wedding, and a tragedy ended in a death. He was talking about Shakespeare (and he may have been quoting or paraphrasing someone else; I have forgotten almost everything I learned at university), but I think the sentiment applies here as well. If Seita and Setsuko had been just a little bit luckier, or had found even one nice adult, or hadn't lost both or either of their parents, Grave of the Fireflies could have had a happy ending. Likewise, if Satsuki and Mei had been unlucky, or had found evil spirits, or their mother had had something terminal, My Neighbor Totoro could have had a sad ending. Why does one set of siblings get a safe and happy family while the other gets death? Comedy and tragedy.

Grave of the Fireflies always leaves me wrecked at the end. It doesn't matter that I know how it ends (the film tells us in its opening scene how it's going to end), I always sob uncontrollably for a few minutes. And then I put on My Neighbor Totoro, and I start to feel better from the moment the opening credits start. I didn't know this before today, but Studio Ghibli did release these two films together in Japan in 1988, and were shown as a double feature in cinemas, proving that even they knew we would need a Totoro chaser after Grave of the Fireflies.

Coda: the US, however, decided to release Grave of the Fireflies in 1989, a full year before they released My Neighbor Totoro, because they're apparently a bunch of fucking sadists.

#AGhibliADay #WhenMarnieWasThere

Today, we watched When Marnie Was There, the most recent Ghibli film to date. It was released in 2014, and got some quite surprisingly critical admiration. I say surprising because frankly, we weren't fans.

Anna is adopted and has asthma. Because of this, she feels very different from other kids. Her mother (who she still calls auntie until the very end of the film) sends her to relatives in the country to hopefully improve her asthma a bit. While there, Anna befriends a very obviously ghost girl named Marnie. Marnie only appears at night, she appears and disappears like magic, and sometimes, only appears in Anna's dreams. Yeah, ghost all the way.

This is technically not a bad movie, but my idea of what was happening crashed so hard against what actually happened, I had no choice but to be greatly annoyed.

What I thought was happening was a queer coming-of-age story. I thought Anna felt different not because she was adopted and had asthma (which are perfectly valid reasons for feeling different, don't get me wrong), but because she was gay. She didn't like hanging out with other people, she didn't have any friends at school, she seemed secretive and withdrawn from pretty much everyone around her (in one jarring scene, she calls a girl she just met a "fat pig" for looking at her lantern festival wish without permission, which yes, is quite jerky, but maybe not worthy of name calling), and she only really opens up when she meets Marnie. Anna and Marnie proceed to spend secretive nights together, sharing secrets, going on small adventures, missing each other when they're not together, and in two separate scenes, saying they love each other.

It turns out, however, Marnie isn't a potential love interest at all; she's Anna's dead grandmother! What a ridiculous twist!

I understand that my reading was way off the mark, and that it may be unique to me, and I knew going in that this was yet another Ghibli film based on a novel. What I didn't know was that novel was published in 1967, when a queer coming-of-age story was practically unheard of.

So yeah. Take my dislike of this film with a grain of salt. You may enjoy more than me simply because you didn't start out with a wildly different premise in your head.

#AGhibliADay #HowlsMovingCastle

As you may or may not have noticed, we skipped a day. There was a family emergency (everyone and everything is fine now, so don't worry) that took us out of the house for the whole evening, so we had no time to watch anything.

But today, we watched Howl's Moving Castle. We had both seen it before independently of each other, but only once when it first came out and neither one of us could remember anything until it actually happened, so it was like watching it for the first time.

I do remember being somewhat disappointed when I first watched it, like too many things were left unexplained. I also remember reading the book it's based on immediately after and liking that a whole lot more (though I don't remember any of it anymore either).

On this second viewing, I looked for a theme, something that could tie the various disparate threads of the movie together. The first thread is the antagonism between Howl and the Witch of the Waste, which Sophie inadvertently gets in the middle of, and gets turned into an old woman for her trouble. The second thread is Sophie's journey to become young again, and how that takes her to the titular castle. The third thread is the war between two unnamed nations, and the destruction that is wreaking everywhere they meet. The fourth and final thread is Howl's own journey, though I have to admit this is the thread that is most hurt by various cuts Miyazaki had to make to fit the novel into a two-hour animated feature.

While these four threads crisscross each other, they honestly seem to have little in common beyond Howl himself. The Witch of the Waste is ultimately taken care of by Howl's old teacher, Suliman (and that name could be an essay all by itself), at which point Howl and Sophie rescue the Witch and their antagonism is never mentioned again. The war ultimately ends because Suliman saw Howl and Sophie's happy ending thanks to Heen (the most ridiculous-looking dog in all of Studio Ghibli), and she decides now's a good time to stop it... which makes no sense? Howl's journey... yeah, I don't know. There's a black room that leads to his childhood (literally; Sophie uses the black room to go to the past at one point), and he made a bargain with the demon Calcifer, but none of it makes any real sense as presented. The most fleshed-out thread is Sophie's journey, which is basically a love story. That's not bad or anything, but you can easily see where it's going a mile away.

So, what was the unifying theme? I'd like to think it was forgiveness. It explains almost every ultimate action by pretty much every character in the film. The war between the two nations may have been engineered by Suliman so she could find Howl and punish him for leaving her, but when she saw how happy he was with Sophie, she forgave him and stopped the war. The Witch forgives Howl for whatever injustice he wrought on her (he likely spurned her at one point or another, as she really wanted his heart, both literally and symbolically) when she gives his heart to Sophie (both literally and symbolically) so Sophie can save him. Calcifer and Howl forgive each other and undo the pact they made so long ago. And Sophie basically forgives everyone: the Witch, Calcifer, Suliman and her war, her mother (who is a fleeting presence at best), and Howl.

I could be wrong. Maybe forgiveness has nothing to do with this movie. Maybe it's about being brave and confident, which is supported by how Sophie's transformation comes and goes depending on her actions. Maybe it's love, and how that transcends our sometimes monstrous actions. Maybe it's something else entirely. But I think forgiveness fits best, and ties an otherwise truncated and disparate story together, papering over its many plot holes.

So, I forgive this movie for not being all it could be, and I will love it on its own terms.

PS. Seriously though, read the book by Diana Wynne Jones. I remember it being much better 😃

#AGhibliADay #PomPoko

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?

#AGhibliADay #SpiritedAway

Today we watched Spirited Away. We'd both watched it before, and this is the girl's second-favorite Ghibli film (after Whisper of the Heart). It's maybe my fourth or fifth (I will rank them all at the end of this because I like to rank things 😃 )

I had forgotten just how much truly horrifying imagery there was in the film. From the jump, you've got parents turning into pigs, a spider-man (not a Spider-Man), and more yokai than you can shake a stick at. But it doesn't end there, oh no. There's the three rolling green heads. There's Yubaba's familiar, which has Yubaba's face. There's Yubaba herself, who has grossly incorrect proportions and a giant face. There's the creepy old-man-faced dragon that comes out of a stink monster after Chihiro washes it properly. There's No Face basically at all times, but especially when he starts eating and has arms and legs (fuck you, No Face!). There's the giant baby, which is almost as horrifying as the giant baby from Akira.

I understand that most of these people/creatures are ultimately friendly or at least not awful (and the giant baby and Yubaba's familiar are both transformed into some pretty adorable creatures), but that doesn't make them any less terrifying the first time they pop up on screen. I hope parents aren't letting their kids watch this.

My favorite scene in this movie is after Haku takes Chihiro to see her parents in the pig farm for the first time. Chihiro squats down near a field of something (wheat? corn? rice?) and Haku offers her some rice balls, assuring her they're good for her. She finally breaks down and cries after a long day and night of running on only adrenaline, of trying to figure out this new world, of deciding whether or not to trust the people that are trying to help her.

Chihiro is able to traverse this world and its many dangers and pitfalls for two reasons, and two reasons only: because people are nice to her (including some of the horrifying creatures/people, like Kamaji, No Face, Baby, Zeniba, etc.), and because she is nice to people, even the ones that have maybe tried to hurt her before, or she's been told not to trust. If this movie has any message beyond yokai are both terrifying and cool, it is to be kind to each other. If we're kind to each other, we can do anything, even escape a seemingly inescapable situation (and if this film has a second message, it's to not judge anybody on appearance alone). I hope parents are letting their kids watch this.

#AGhibliADay #Ponyo

Today, we watched Ponyo. The first time we watched this movie was on one of our earlier dates, at Golden Village Cinema in VivoCity.

This is a sweet adorable movie about a magic goldfish named Ponyo who longs to be human after falling in love with Sosuke. The fact that they're both five-year-olds only makes it even more adorable.

Ponyo's dad, the undersea wizard Fujimoto, is kind of jerk, but ultimately nice enough to let Ponyo choose for herself, while her mother is a sea goddess with some pretty sweet hair and probably the nicest person ever.

But I don't even want to talk about that. What I want to talk about is how great Ponyo's character design is, in all three stages of transformation. First, her goldfish stage: she clearly has a human face and red hair, and looks nothing like a goldfish, but everyone who looks at her thinks goldfish, so we'll just go with it. Her eyes are enormous and she has a round little belly (even the credits song says so). Then her intermediate stage: for some reason, when she first grows legs and hands, they are chicken legs in both positions. They are initially a bit weird, but you get used to them and they become adorable. Her face smooshes down a little, but it's still very clearly a goldfish face. She reverts to this stage whenever she uses her magic, but no one ever seems to comment on it. Finally, her human stage: she becomes an adorable five -year-old girl. Her general features are similar to her goldfish stage: red hair, red body (that is now a dress instead of her skin), and slightly large eyes (though not as large as when she's in either goldfish or intermediate stage). And while her hands and feet look human as well, she has very dexterous feet, and can use them like hands (like a chimpanzee or a gorilla). Conclusion: Ponyo is adorable no matter the stage, and this might be Studio Ghibli's best character design of all time (which is also used for Ponyo's little sisters, who are smaller than Ponyo and also incredibly adorable).

While there are some tense moments dealing with flooding and weird fish made out of water, I think this movie is suitable for kids and for adults looking for a nice, feel-good movie with no real stakes beyond adorable children going on a magical adventure.