Hayao Miyazaki and the Marnie Poster – does the old man have a point?

The news made the rounds last week that Hayao Miyazaki had issues, to put it mildly, with the promotional poster for Studio Ghibli’s latest offering: When Marnie Was There.

I’m still trying to wrap my head about what exactly his problem is with this particular movie poster. According to reports, Miyazaki says using pictures of a girl to get attention is “just plain outdated and cheesy.” Uhh, what? Just in case I was reading him wrong, I went back and looked at older Ghibli posters: Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Ponyo, Nausicaa, Arrietty. They all feature the main girl quite prominently on their covers. Perhaps not in as enticing a pose as Marnie, but prominently nevertheless.

So what exactly is Miyazaki protesting against? The very-slightly suggestive pose Marnie is striking? It’s a typical “cute girl being friendly” anime pose, but hardly as ‘come hither’ as some anime can get. Perhaps he wanted to see her standing straight up and stock still like girls in his other covers, but that doesn’t means a 15-degree tilt in posture is enough to ruin the whole idea.

Or is the problem her hair and eyes? Blonde and blue-haired foreigners in anime are often – not always, but often enough – portrayed as wild, lascivious, uncontrolled sexpots. Thus by virtue of her nationality, Marnie is already in the over-sexualized category, at least in Miyazaki’s eyes, meaning that any slight friendliness on her part can be mistaken as an overt come on. This is especially so because one of the earlier posters had “I love you” written on it. This isn’t his official opinion, by the way. I’m just trying to get into Miyazaki’s head on this issue.

Really, though, I think the truth behind the issue: money. Controversy sells. This is the first Ghibli movie to be released since Miyazaki retired (again), and maybe the studio felt they needed a little extra oomph behind their marketing. What better way to ride on the maestro’s coattails while ostensibly breaking with the past than by releasing critical – but not too critical – comments from the guru himself? I won’t go so far as to say they made up the comments for publicity’s sake, but they certainly promoted them enthusiastically enough.

When Marnie Was Here comes out in Japan in July 2014 and in the rest of the world not too long afterwards. I’m quite looking forward to it, though I still have to watch Arrietty and The Wind Rises first.

Ganbare!! Tabuchi-kun!! volume 1

Earlier this week, I read volume 1 of Ganbare!! Tabuchi-kun!! (がんばれ!!タブチくん!!), a 4-koma baseball manga by Ishii Hisaichi. Western fans might know him best as the guy who wrote the original manga that Studio Ghibli later adapted into “My Neighbors the Yamadas.” I’m on a baseball manga kick right now (as opposed to a real life baseball kick. I’m not that into real-life baseball), so I started this on a whim, but it turned out to be pretty good.

The most interesting thing about Tabuchi-kun – apart from the content, of course – is that it was based on the career of a real-life catcher/first baseman/cleanup hitter. In fact, “based on” is too mild. It straight up caricatured Koichi Tabuchi, right down to using his full name and team. Basically apart from his wife “Miyoko”, any named character in the manga is an actual human being.

Naturally this makes for interesting reading, but it can also make you uncomfortable when the comic gets a little mean-spirited. The whole series is aimed at pointing fun at Tabuchi, but sometimes it’s done in more cruel fashion and sometimes it’s mild and heart-warming. It’s sad to see Tabuchi booed out of the stadium or ostracized by his peers for no good reason other than that the mangaka just doesn’t like him.

It becomes even sadder when you go to J-wiki and read that the manga started right at the time when Tabuchi was playing poorly because he was recovering from a career-threatening injury that put him in the hospital for over three months and led to him gaining some weight. It’s like that tasteless “Derek Eater” headline the New York Post ran a couple of years ago, except imagine they ran that headline every week for 10 years, even long after Jeter had retired (not a Jeter fan, just saying).

Sample done by me. The real manga is in Japanese only.
Sample done by me. The real manga is in Japanese only.

However, it turns out that the real Koichi Tabuchi is a huge, open fan of the manga and absolutely loves it. He even credits it with helping him meet his current wife, so if anything he’s grateful for its existence. So if Tabuchi isn’t mad, then I’m not mad either. No one knows what other recurring characters like Yasuda (my favorite), Suzuki, Oh and Hirooka think of the series, but since they generally come across in a better light than Tabuchi does, they probably don’t have much to complain about.

This frees me to enjoy the silly, slightly mean humor of volume 1 for all it’s worth. I’m looking forward to reading the rest, because part of the humor comes from the interplay between characters like Yasuda and Ooya, and Tabuchi and Kakefu, and much of the first volume is spent just introducing and establishing those characters.

There are 3 volumes of Ganbare!! Tabuchi-kun!! and a further 5 volumes of the follow-up, Tabuchi-kun. You don’t need to know much about Japanese baseball to enjoy this manga, though it helps to know Sadaharu Oh, current holder of the world-record in career homeruns (868) since he shows up a lot. Apart from that, just substitute your favorite team and players and enjoy.

Howl’s Moving Castle anime review

Howl’s Moving Castle was not quite as nonsensical as Tales from Earthsea, but it was just as boring. No, even more so.

What’s so good about Howl except his good looks?

And why did the movie have to drag on so long? It just meanders aimlessly from one event to another, then the climax scene where Sophie goes back into the past comes out of nowhere, then bam, happy ending.

Long. Boring. Annoying. Massive waste of time. Full of pointless characters and events. Seems it was based on a book, so Miyazaki felt the need to force things in where they didn’t belong, e.g. Sophie’s sister Lettie, Sophie’s mom barging her way in to see them and crap like that which could have been done away with for tighter storytelling.

The moral of the story: every problem can be solved by a kiss from a cute girl. Also girls don’t want to be hatters, they want to be housewives. And old ladies are useless, which is why even when a girl is under a spell that turns her old, when it’s time to do anything worthwhile, she’ll magically transform back into a younger stronger form without any explanation.

The war parts really don’t make any sense. And seriously, how does Howl and Sophie falling in love prompt Madame Sullivan to call off the war? Why were they fighting in the first place? What’s Howl doing up there all the time anyway? It feels like Miyazaki shoe-horned some anti-war propaganda into a story that originally had nothing to do with war, but I wouldn’t know without reading the original. Anyway, love conquers all, including stuff it has nothing to do with. Medetashi medetashi.

Calcifer was cute though.

Tales from Earthsea anime review

I’d heard Tales From Earthsea was bad, but I had no idea it was terribly boring as well.

They tried to shovel too much of the Earthsea mythos into one movie and ended up with a junky senseless patchwork. It’s been a while since I read the originals anyway, so I tried to watch it from the point of view of a complete newcomer to the series. Even then it didn’t make much sense.

Was there any real reason for Therru to be a dragon? And they go on and on about Arren’s fear (of death?) driving him crazy, but why should a 17-year old be that scared of dying? What’s gone on in his life so far that made him that way? And why steal the sword? Why kill his father in the process? And the Shadow, it arose from his fear? That’s not how it works in Earthsea! Whoops, newcomer perspective shot to pieces.

And Tenar just played a decorative role throughout. It would have been just as well if she hadn’t been there. Same with Therru, come to think of it. Heck, same with Ged/Sparrowhawk. None of them were needed in this movie, which is just about one boy learning to face his fears. You could have set it in any other world and given him some random old mentor and things would have worked out exactly the same way, or better. No wonder Ursula Le Guin commented, “It’s your movie, it’s not my book.”

The pacing was kinda odd too. Things never got really heated or exciting. There was always a dampener somewhere. Ooh, he’s getting attacked by wolves…wait no, they were run off easily. Ooh, he got kidnapped…wait no, Ged rescued him easily. Ooh, a showdown between Ged and a mind-controlled Arren…wait no, that was over in 5 seconds, followed by a sermon. Then the showdown on the rooftop stretched on so long and in so many fits and starts that it never got good. In the end, Dragonus Ex Machina, bad wizard gets fried, everyone lives happily ever after.

We don’t even get to see Arren go back and pay for his crimes like he said he would. Sure he says he’ll go, but the next time we see him he’s working on the farm like always and giggling like a schoolgirl at Ged’s stories. Uhh, are you the same prince who just murdered his dad and fled the country or was that someone else? It’s kind of ironic that a movie about the importance of life and living it ends with an unrepentant murderer laughing his ass off like there’s no tomorrow.

Last question: Therru is a dragon. What’s that got to do with the dragons that were fighting at the beginning of the series? And what about Tenar’s story about Therru’s parents burning and abandoning her, was that a lie? If yes, why? If no, huh? Why would her dragon-parents burn and leave her?

tl;dr: Tales from Earthsea is a massive mess. The art is as gorgeous as ever and I liked the soundtrack, but everything else about it was severely below average. If it hadn’t been from Studio Ghibli, something like this would never have been released in theaters.

Now for Howl’s Moving Castle.

The Cat Returns anime review

I watched Princess Mononoke (good, but seriously violent), Pom Poko (bleh) and My Neighbors the Yamadas (okay, but dull) and skipped over Spirited Away because I’d already seen it. I didn’t feel like writing reviews about them, though. Sorry.

Happily enough The Cat Returns was great! Fun, and mercifully short. Very much like a fairy tale, and the cheesy “believe in yourself” message was there from the start so it didn’t come out of nowhere. Nice simple story, funny characters, especially Muta and the King and that smarmy servant, great animation as always, decent voice acting that got the job done, everything ends very happily ever after.

It is by far the “kiddiest” of the Ghibli movies I’ve seen so far, including My Neighbor Totoro, but I love it! I was a little worried about that Machida-sempai romantic stuff in the beginning, but happily enough it came to nothing. I like romance to be at a minimum in my Ghibli series.

Ah, that was fun. Now since I’ve already watched Ponyo, I only have Earthsea, Howl’s Moving Castle and The Borrower Arriety to go. Arriety hasn’t come out on DVD in English yet, I think, so it’s just Earthsea and Howl. The Earthsea books were some of my favorite fantasy books growing up and I hear they made a mess out of that, so first I’ll get the bad stuff out of the way, and then I’ll be able to enjoy Howl as my “final taste” of Studio Ghibli. Good plan.

Update: since I wrote this review, I’ve shown this anime to several of my young nephews and nieces and their friends, at least 20 young children aged between 5 and 15, and they all love it. It’s their most-watched anime movie over all the other Ghibli stuff. Not to say that The Cat Returns is necessarily better than other Ghibli movies (though I liked it more, to be honest), but it’s certainly the most kid-friendly. It has funny animals, wacky hijinks aplently, constant action, a clear point and a happy ending. It’s easy to follow and easy to enjoy. If you’re looking to buy something for yourself, you might go with one of the other shows, but if you’re looking for something children will enjoy, definitely get The Cat Returns first.