two (very different) animated tales of animal survival

I recently watched two animated films about how society and other pressures have adversely affected animal colonies. One was a Japanese film from 1994, Pom Poko, and the other a British film, Watership Down, from 1978, based on Richard Adams's popular novel.

Pom Poko

Written and directed by Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies, My Neighbors the Yamadas, Only Yesterday) Pom Poko was animated by Studio Ghibli and has become one of my daughter's and my favorite animated films. Its environmental message is as strong as ever. As the suburbs of Tokyo grow, they are sprawling and destroying the countryside, specifically the Tama Hills, the habitat of the tanuki, or raccoon dogs, mischievous shape-shifters who just want their home and their carefree lifestyle to stay the same as it always has. But that is not to be. The tanuki band together to try and fight the encroaching humans. They utilize their shape-shifting abilities to both frighten and blend in. Pom Poko mixes different animation styles — realistic, anthropomorphic, and cartoony drawings. One of the highlights of the film is a monster parade, where the raccoon dogs try to scare their human neighbors by transforming themselves into a number of fantastic creatures, including different ghosts and spirits, goblins, other animals like monkeys and tigers, and giant skeletons.

The three styles of Pom Poko

Watership Down

John Hurt is the voice of Hazel, the leader of a small group of rabbits who have fleed their unsafe warren and are in search of a better, safer life elsewhere. As they journey across the countryside they encounter dangerous animals, traps, rabbits kept in cages, and other threats to their survival. The impressive British voice cast includes Richard Briers, Ralph Richardson, Zero Mostel, Denholm Elliot, Nigel Hawthorne, and Joss Ackland. Not exactly a film for the kiddies, Watership Down includes scenes of violence and many of the rabbits are bloodied on their journey to find a new home. The film is frankly a horror movie. It has a wonderful opening animated sequence, outlining the mythology of the rabbits' world, done in a different, more graphic style, which was directed by original director John Hubley, who died in 1977. Martin Rosen was hired to replace him.

Watership Down was very well made, but it's a bit of a downer, and I doubt we would ever want to see it again. We have already watched Pom Poko numerous times and I know will see it again (and again). Although its story is also poignant, and some of the tanuki come to unfortunate ends, there is still something uplifting about the film. Pom Poko is one of those movies that is hard to describe, except to insist that it is so great that you really just have to see it. Its humor is goofy and unlike any other movie out there. Its characters are at times annoying, touching, and lovable. It's just good and highly recommended. Check it out.

Note re anime styles (big thanks to Mario for putting this so succinctly):

It might help those readers who are not familiar with anime and manga conventions to know that the childish, or "chibi", style is a convention used by some artists to show the character is behaving childishly and thus improperly. The other convention commonly seen in both anime and manga is the "large-eyed" look — if a character has over-sized eyes, it means innocence: a boy younger than about 15 or 16, or a girl younger than about 21 or so. This last can be a very useful marker: in a work that uses this convention, a character who should have the large eyes but doesn't bears watching, because something is very wrong about him or her.

grave of the fireflies

I have been wanting to see this anime film for so long, but at the same time dreading it. If you don't know what the movie is about and don't want to know before seeing it, then stop reading, although the fate of its narrator is revealed in the first scene.



I think part of my hesitancy was the hard facts of the plot—two children, a brother and sister, try to survive the aftermath of air raids in war-torn WW2 Japan, only to die of starvation. It sounds so stark, and the movie is rough and intense at times, but there are also so many moments of beauty and courage and joy. It is haunting and tragic and poetic. True art. I am glad I finally made myself watch Grave of the Fireflies.

There are so many wonderful scenes—Two little fireflies meander  their way across the screen, their other companions dead or dying, foreshadowing the chidrens' fate and what has happened to their friends and neighbors in Kobe. Like the incandescent fireflies, the lives of Seita, the older brother, and Setsuko, his younger sister, appear brief and aimless. When a group of young boys discover their home—the siblings have been camping in an abandoned bomb shelter—they run around, poking fun at the meager traces of their existence, but the children are unseen, nowhere to be found, as if they were already ghosts. Setsuko's lifeless doll is often shown lying on a bed or the ground, her color gradually fading.

The film is also a fairytale of sorts—the wicked witch/stepmother is an aunt who wants to steal food from the newly-orphaned children and send them out into the world to starve. People they encounter, like the farmer, or the doctor, who should be helpful, instead are just a hindrance, similar to the unhelpful dwarf in Snow White and Rose Red. There are a few sympathetic people, who at least understand their predicament, but this little Hansel and Gretel will never make it out of the woods.



As I was waching I kept wondering why Seita didn't just go get his mother's money out of the bank and buy them food earlier. But he was living in a nightmare fantasy world—the expectation of grown-ups helping him; of their home, the magical cave of the fireflies, being a safe haven; of their father coming to rescue them. When Seita finally pulls himself together to accept how ill his little sister is, it is too late. Setsuko is already too far gone on the path to starvation. It is clear from the montage we see while she is slowly dying and Seita is returning with food, that she has been left alone too much while her brother has tried to navigate this strange new world. A small starving child, left alone to put inappropriate things like rocks and buttons—anything—in her empty little stomach.

Grave of the Fireflies was based on the real-life experiences of Akiyuki Nosaka and his feelings of guilt at the death of his sister. It is amazing to me, and uplifting, to watch how hard Seita tries to make his little sister happy, to give her some joy, in the midst of all the horror that surrounds them. Unfortunately, it is also this escape from reality that he tries to provide that dooms them. It is tragic.

The first few moments of the film reveal that Seita has starved to death. The rest of the film is a flashback of sorts—memories of his parents, his sister. We don't really see how he got to the train station where he died all the way from the countryside where his little sister died, but it doesn't matter. Their lives and deaths tell forgotten stories of the human fallout of war. Of two vulnerable orphans left to fend for themselves in a world where there is no place for them.



The dvd had some extras which added poignancy—especially commentary by a pre-cancer thumbs-uppin' Roger Ebert. Like the children in the film, he can't go home again, but his words and ideas can still touch us. He points out in his interview that even though it is clearly the United States that is causing the specific devastation in the film, the country is never named, except as "the enemy." This helps the film to be viewed more as a universal comment on what happens to the innocent in a conflict. It was probably through Ebert's recommendation that I first heard of Grave of the Fireflies, years ago. It took me a while, but I'm so glad I took his advice.