Type: Movie
Rating: PG-13
Runtime: 133 min
Directed By Miyazaki Hayao
Produced By Studio Ghibli
Year Produced: 1997
The To Aru Kagaku no Home Theater Miyazaki Marathon... and then some... continues, despite public protest!
This is a "festival" where I sit down at spend about a week and a half watching all of the Miyazaki movies that I want to. I didn't mention this last time, but I don't have any particular interest in Ponyo.
What's still to come are:
Monday of Next Week - Spirited Away (2001)
Tuesday of Next Week - Howl's Moving Castle (2004)
I've already reviewed Kaze no Tani no Nausicaa, Laputa: Castle in the Sky, My Neighbor Totoro, Kiki's Delivery Service, Porco Rosso, and Whisper of the Heart, so if you're interested in that, then check it out... back there.
During a more fantastic age in Japanese history (specifically the Muromachi Period), spirits were a more common sight than they are today. Sure, those soot gremlins out of My Neighbor Totoro appear randomly, but not around America.
In this time, everybody's heard of the "Spirit of the Forest", which is... the spirit of the forest, the very life of the woods of Japan, but that's not the point right now, the point is that there is a very small village in the extreme countryside of Japan that's having some kind of spiritual... scare I guess, although they could be freaking out about bandits or something like that.
Prince Ashitaka, the... prince of the village (and of the Emishi people (look it up if you care, this is semi-historical)) is riding out to the watchtower on Yakul, a red elk. He's going out there to find out what's got the village people so worried. On the way there, he passes his sister and her friends, telling them to return to the village quickly.
At the watchtower, he peers out into the forest and spots something moving behind the barrier placed there. As he and the old man on guard watch, a demon smashes down the wall and then... sneezes, I suppose. When it does, the things "skin" comes off in the form of a bunch of weird worms. It's a boar underneath... or at least until the worms fall back on top.
Achoo!
The demon spots Yakul and obviously sees a meal in it, and so charges towards the tower. Ashitaka manages to scare Yakul out of his stupor, but in exchange, he doesn't have the opportunity to get down, and so the demon rams and tips over the tower, so Ashitaka grabs the old man and hops to safety in a tree.
Ashitaka gets down, the guard shouting after him to watch that the demon doesn't touch him, less the curse be on him too.
Ashitaka gets Yakul and then dashes after the demon. When he manages to catch up with it again, Ashitaka tries to ward it off by... asking it nicely, since that's all you can do with a god/demon. But it doesn't work.
The two burst out of the forest, Ashitaka and Yakul dashing on, but the demon pauses and then notices Ashitaka's little sister. More food.
When it goes after them, Ashitaka gets in it's way, and when one of the little girls falls down, Ashitaka starts a fight with the demon, shooting it in the eye.
The demon gets seriously pissed, chasing after Ashitaka, and managing to grab onto his arm.
Ashitaka rips himself away, then fires another arrow, striking and killing the demon.
After the battle, all of the people run out to see what's left of the demon and their prince. The place where the demon grabbed Ashitaka is burned with some kind of evil mark now.
The wise woman is fetched and she tends to the boar god, asking it to pass on peacefully, but the boar's bitchy and doesn't agree, and actually curses all the human race. Wow. That's not very nice of him.
Later that night, the village elders all meet (along with Ashitaka. He is a prince, after all). The wise woman uses fortune telling to determine Ashitaka's fate. He's going to die. That mark on his arm will eventually consume his entire body and kill him. Kind of like cancer, I suppose.
Maybe because they don't like living with a cursed person, or maybe because of some ancient tradition, Ashitaka is forced/obligated to leave the village, which he does without complaining.
The only clue he's given is to go West. That's helpful. But wait! The wise woman reaches insider her robe and pull out this; a ball of iron, in case you're wondering.
Before he actually manages to leave though, his little sister runs out (defying village law), giving him a crystal dagger to remember her by.
This is important later.
And so Ashitaka sets out to the West to search for the answers that the wise woman was talking about, but he's going to find more than just answers. There's always been a shitload more questions than answers, believe me.
Like I said a couple of posts back, this was probably the first anime that I ever watched, and I'm pretty happy about that. I mean, it's got everything that a teenager needs; samurais, battles, blood... and that's it! We're easy to satisfy.
Miyazaki's naturalist theme is back with a vengeance, along with a humanitarian element that has been rather rare since Nausicaa (it was a lot more stressed in the manga, but you could still pick up on the small issues in the anime).
This portrays the natural element a lot more forcefully. It's presented as a battle, humans and technology vrs. the forest and spirituality. It's kind of sad how you can relate this to pretty much every one of the world's issues...
The music was nice. It wasn't to my specific style, but I found myself humming it quite a lot after I had finished watching it. Serious Japanese influences, mainly because this is a semi-historical film. The only thing in it that's not accurate is... you know, the flamethrowers. I don't think that you can do that with gunpowder.
... and if you can, please don't write a million comments protesting your insane knowledge of explosives and firearms, because I find it kind of creepy and... boring.
Actually, I listened to the Japanese version for the first time. It was really weird, amazingly. The Japanese version was a lot quieter than the English one. The Japanese voice actors were a lot more toned-down than the American ones, so that made is quieter, but there was also a lot of stuff said in the English version that didn't have a place in the Japanese one. That was kind of cool.
... and Moro totally sounded like a guy, only it's not. Kind of creepy, just like this.
Bwa ha ha ha ha!
It was my favorite one of all the Miyazaki movies, and in the unlikely situation that you actually agree with something that I've written here, you'll like it too. So watch it, if nothing else.
Coming up next!
Day 8: Spirited Away!
