Whisper of the Heart (1995) Review

An early attempt by Hayao Miyazaki to step back from directing led to this soulful adaptation of a manga about a stubborn middle school student trying to find a direction in life. Filled with trials of school, friendship, family, and even romance, her journey takes her to the most controversial ending in Studio Ghibli history.

Adolescence is a turbulent period in the life due to all the new and confusing situations you encounter. Most of the trouble is in dealing with others while trying to figure out just who you are. This is a tricky balancing act in even the best of circumstances.

In our current culture, that time has extended well past the teens through the twenties to encroach on the thirty something’s. But in 1995 when Whisper of the Heart was released, there was still a desire to mature at an early age though it was fading.

Set in a Japanese city, the film greets us with a montage of urban life after the sun has faded and the lights have just flickered on providing the glow that can make night life possible. It’s that period when responsibilities have mostly ended with the promise of things possible wafting through the summer air. Ironically, the Olivia Newton-John version of the song “Country Roads” is used as a backdrop for the cityscape.

Eventually we follow a girl leaving a market and accompany her home to a small family apartment. Shizuku Tsukishima is enjoying her summer break by burying herself in books about fairy tales. But a mystery arises for the middle school student when a name on the checkout card of a book she’s reading seems vaguely familiar. Sure enough, the same name appears on all the books she’s checked out from the library: Seiji Amasawa.

Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind (1984) Review

Hiyao Miyazaki’s second film that he directed displays all the elements that have made him legendary: a brave heroine, a strong environmental message, dazzling flight, and extraordinary images that linger in the mind long after the movie ends. The story follows a young princess trying to save humanity while facing hostile neighboring kingdoms, deadly giant insects, and a world devastated by an ancient war. It is a great pleasure to review the movie that allowed Studio Ghibli to be founded.

Way back in the early 1980s, animated movies were in the doldrums with Disney suffering a creative and financial slump. Other studios attempted to recapture the magic, but none saw great success. In later years Disney would rise again, yet it was over in Japan that real animated magic was reborn thanks to the creative genius of a struggling forty year old animator named Hayao Miyazaki.

Having had some success in directing the adaptation of Lupin the Third: The Castle of Cagliostro in 1979, Miyazaki wanted to make his own creations but was getting nowhere. It took Toshio Susuki the editor in chief of Animage magazine befriending him for things to finally start rolling. Finding Miyazaki bursting with ideas he suggested that Hayao create a manga to run in the magazine.

That manga debuted in 1982 and was called Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind. Its success made it possible to raise funds to make a movie and the world of animation, not just anime, would never be the same. Miyazaki’s works would go on to influence traditional animators and even the new wave of computer generated animation movies at Pixar.

Nausicaä opens with a masked man riding a strange dodo-like bird out of a wind swept haze. Visually and auditorily striking, the scene seems to step straight out of one the era’s fantasy magazines such as Heavy Metal or Epic Illustrated. I have the vague memory of seeing the intro either in stills or possibly flipping past the horrifically altered version Warriors of the Wind on HBO at the time. Suffice it to say this was nothing like the staid Disney animation of the time and made an impression.

The man investigates the ruins of a settlement that has become overgrown by fungi in a very grim introduction to the setting. Once the credits start rolling it becomes clear that this is the future Earth and not some fantasy world. A wealth of information is quietly and quickly conveyed through intercutting tapestries depicting the downfall of man with the actual events briefly glimpsed. Fire breathing giants laying waste to the world alternate with images of a white winged woman sometimes clothed in blue dominate the introduction…

Piracy and Anime

Being the type to delve into how industries operate when I’m interested in their products, I’ve been watching the problems with the anime industry – especially in the United States. Boom and bust cycles are fascinating to observe and the anime here in the States managed to do that in in the space of one decade. So an interview with the former Bandai Entertainment USA director of marketing gives a rare insight to how things actually work. Be warned, there is profanity in the podcast.

As I’m listening to it, the brief mention of how online piracy damaged sales caught my attention. It got me thinking on how a niche industry can be devastated by people stealing the product and never paying for it. Disclaimer: It isn’t right to steal from the big industries like Hollywood or music too. Also, I won’t get into the manga side of things.

Many are the mistakes that have caused companies to fold or retreat from the anime market in the U.S., but the explosion in file sharing coincided with rise and fall in my eyes. Once broadband saturated the country around the middle of the 2000’s, piracy of videos increased. That was also when anime imploded.

Muddling Through

Sometimes life isn’t about clear cut victories or significant progress, but simply about wandering through the vagaries that swirl about you. The patience of Job isn’t an example for just for the disasters of life – it applies to slow times where nothing seems to go completely right too. For me, it is the little things that get under my skin, not crisis level events. Those I can handle.

So it has been the drawn out recovery from the infection, not the severe illness endured while at its peak that has made me a grouch. Actually, my being irritable is usually a sign I’m feeling better, so maybe I shouldn’t whine about my whining. Hmm, exponential whining, what a concept.

Positive things have happened along the way. None of them have been dramatic, but most good things are small anyway. I should list them to smack myself in the face with them:

• Being able to get out and socialize with friends Saturday night even if running late.
• Getting to church the last three Sunday’s despite the pain.
• The Holy Ghost playing the role of teacher and giving me some very interesting insights this weekend.
• Having movies to watch when I was unable to read even light material last week.
• Learning more about my grandparents’ lives through Mamie’s diaries. Our society has lost so much since then that it is tragic.
• Finally sorting, cleaning up, and backing up years worth of files, music, and images on my PC. I can’t believe I forgot to back up all the music purchased from Amazon and Google Play last year!
• The new monitor is finally calibrated and showing me flaws in photos I never saw before. Is that a positive? Depends on what I do with them, I suppose.
• Finally getting The Dark Knight Rises review written after a month of working on it. Writing while sick is not efficient, but it did get done. Eventually.
• B-Movies. Still one of the best ways to deal with being too sick to do anything productive.
• Curry.

I won’t list the bad stuff. Instead some random observations follow.

Brave getting Best Animated Film at the Oscars was surprising to see in the headlines. I only just saw it and unlike the vast majority of Pixar fans think it was their best film. Marketing didn’t do it justice at all and it was the most Miyazaki like of the studio’s offerings. The relationships in the family and the focus on mother/daughter conflicts were something that could easily come out of Studio Ghibli. Must be hate of gingers clouding people’s minds?

2001 on Blu-ray is phenomenal. I’d purchased it over a year ago and forgot I had it, so I popped it in the Samsung player last night. All of my younger friends find it incredibly boring, but it was riveting as always for me. The visual and audio quality is beautiful to say the least. 45 years after being released, it still has better effects than most blockbusters today and hoo boy does it look great in HD.

Speaking of looking great in HD, Viz’s release of the first half of Tiger and Bunny is amazing. The English dub on the first episode was fairly good; can’t comment on later ones since I watched them in Japanese. Between the second set of this and My Neighbor Totoro plus Howl’s Moving Castle coming out on Blu-ray in May, that month is going to hurt my wallet.

Gorgo is coming out the middle of March on BD too, so I am in a quandary about replacing the DVD I only got in the past six months. While a preorder is tempting, if the color shift and over sharpening is still there it won’t be worth it even if it is higher def.

Time to get back to image sorting and working on the next review.

Howl’s Moving Castle (2004) Review

In 2004, Miyazaki’s loose adaptation of Diana Wynne Jones’ novel hit Japanese theaters and quickly became the third highest grossing film in Japanese history.  Filled with lessons about life and love, the film’s main story takes place against the backdrop of massive war with treachery and danger around every corner. Magic meets steampunk, but the movie is really all about heart. UPDATED with new screen captures and revised text.

There is magic to be found in Hayao Miyazaki’s animated films and Howl’s Moving Castle is no exception. If a film comes out of Studio Ghibli you are guaranteed an incredible experience filled with beauty and emotion. Well, anything other than Pom Poko, but the less said about that movie the better. Yes, I am recommending buying this even before starting the review. So what makes it an automatic buy? Read on to find out.

The film begins with the title structure; a steam belching monstrosity on mechanical legs lurching through the mist of an European countryside.  It is a beautiful view of an ugly thing, something that only Miyazaki could pull off. Shortly after seeing the castle ambulate into the mist to escape pursuers, the heroine of the movie is introduced.

Spirited Away (2001) Review

aka Sen to Chihiro no kamikakushi

Drawing on the best elements from his previous movies, director Hayao Miyazaki created a beautiful animated tale of a sullen ten year old girl thrust into a world of magic and spirits. Filled with scares that every kid can relate too, it also has a warmth that cannot be denied while teaching lessons on responsibility, hard work, and love.

There are great films and then there are truly great films that last the test of time. Spirited Away is destined to be the latter and I would go as far as to call it Japan’s equivalent to The Wizard of Oz. Both feature a girl as a protagonist dealing with a very strange parallel world while being helped by locals. There are also feuding witches and a search for something special involved, but in the end I consider this movie to be far more emotionally moving than the American classic.

All movies introduce their main character early on, but I can’t remember seeing a heroine start out by sulking in the back seat of the family car. At the ripe old age of ten, Chihiro thinks she has very good reason to be miserable. The family is moving to a new town and the first bouquet of flowers she has ever received was from her classmates as a farewell present. And those flowers are already dying. Life is being so unfair.

Anime Worth Watching: An Opinion

A comment from Hanny has me thinking about which anime I like and how to go about recommending them. The problem is the style and content varies so much that they are hard to compare to each other. If I were an otaku it would be so much easier because I would like every new piece of trash that comes down the pike. But since I am just an entertainment lover and anime is just a minor subset of what I watch, my likes are very different.

Then there is the problem of trying to rank TV series against theatrical movies, which causes my brain to melt down. But hey, I like tilting at windmills, so here goes. My top three TV series are tied at number uno, so things get messy right off the bat:

1. Fractale, Area 88, Kimi ni Todoke
2. Spirited Away
3. Summer Wars
4. Only Yesterday
5. Squid Girl
6. Princess Mononoke
7. Howl’s Moving Castle
8. Porco Rosso
9. Castle in the Sky
10. C: Control
11. Croisee in a Foreign Labyrinth
12. Space Brothers
13. Bleach
14. Kiki’s Delivery Service
15. Tiger and Bunny
16. Whisper of the Heart
17. Bubblegum Crisis Toyko 2040
18. The Cat Returns
19. Denpa Onna
20. FLCL
21. Akira
22. My Neighbor Totoro
23. Nausicaa Valley of the Wind
24. Hellsing

Only Yesterday (1991) Review

A thoughtful and emotional film from the director of Grave of the Fireflies, Isao Takahata, it couldn’t be more different than that grim story. This story of a woman flashing back on her memories from fifth grade as she takes her summer vacation may sound boring, but it is filled with poignant moments with an incredibly emotional ending.  While aimed mainly at women, the movie managed to be a surprise hit with both genders in Japan and saved Studio Ghibli from financial ruin.

This is one of the hardest to find films by Studio Ghibli in the United States, since it has never been released here on DVD and, according to Wikipedia, never will be.  I was fortunate to catch it on Turner Classic Movies during their Hiyao Miyazaki month and as far as I know that was the only broadcast over here.

The movie starts out with a typically great Studio Ghibli score over the long opening credits which are shown over a fabric texture.  Right away, you get the feeling this will be a slow moving film. Finally the movie starts with a shot of skyscrapers in crowded Tokyo.  Quickly cutting to the interior of one of them, where we are treated to the images of hum drum office work. 

There we are introduced to Taeko, who is getting her ten day vacation approved.  The personnel director notices that she is planning on traveling and inquires if it is due to a breakup.  Slightly embarrassed, she replies no and that she likes going to the countryside.

Without warning, the movie shifts to a flashback when Taeko was ten and in the fifth grade.  It is done without any kind of fadeout and sets the pattern for the rest of the movie. The animation style is different, with washed out watercolors for the backgrounds and muted tones for the characters.