three animated movies
May. 8th, 2026 10:24 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
psocopteraWeathering With You, 2019, the middle of a loose trilogy (with Your Name and Suzume) written and directed by Makoto Shinkai. Like the others, gorgeous and very visually detailed/grounded in place. Less wow factor than Your Name (which remains my favorite of the three) but maybe the deepest emotionally, grappling with grief and a feeling of obligation to be positive for others vs acceptance that grief makes permanent changes.
Only Yesterday, 1991, Studio Ghibli but not Miyazaki (directed by Isao Takahata). Interesting in being about An Actual Adult (the protagonist is 27) rather than a child or teenager, although with lots of flashbacks to when she was ten. Highly episodic - apparently the manga it was adapted from was just the unconnected episodes, and the framing story was invented for the movie. Also it was apparently the highest-grossing Japanese movie of 1991, which is so interesting to me, as I can't imagine American audiences watching something with so little throughline/overarching plot? Also one of the flashbacks was an extended thing about periods and buying pads and the boys learning about periods and teasing the girls and, again, as an American, absolutely mind-blowing to imagine this as a sub-plot in a major film! (I guess there's the period gag in Turning Red, but, I don't know, this felt like a very different handling.) Anyways, really interesting stuff about the appreciation/romanticization of rural life vs the city.
Ocean Waves, 1993, Studio Ghibli directed by Tomomi Mochizuki. A somewhat baffling movie about a guy in love with his best friend, who has no interest in girls, trying to be a good friend to the "difficult" girl his friend likes (and/or be closer to her as a triangulation or substitute for being able to be closer to his friend), with a tacked-on ending about how he actually liked the girl the whole time when the sunset scene on the pier with the saxophone music where he's reuniting with his estranged friend got a little too gay. I mean, not to be a delusional slash shipper, but it just did not seem like they set up that ending at all, except that obligatory heterosexuality required it. Or it could be a cultural literacy problem on my part - maybe to the genre-savvy, finding a girl tiresome is always a sign of attraction - but this is not my first-ever Japanese movie with a romance in it, and I feel like they usually give us more than that. (Also another mention of periods, when the girl says she's having hers! Unimaginable in 1990s American animation!)
Only Yesterday, 1991, Studio Ghibli but not Miyazaki (directed by Isao Takahata). Interesting in being about An Actual Adult (the protagonist is 27) rather than a child or teenager, although with lots of flashbacks to when she was ten. Highly episodic - apparently the manga it was adapted from was just the unconnected episodes, and the framing story was invented for the movie. Also it was apparently the highest-grossing Japanese movie of 1991, which is so interesting to me, as I can't imagine American audiences watching something with so little throughline/overarching plot? Also one of the flashbacks was an extended thing about periods and buying pads and the boys learning about periods and teasing the girls and, again, as an American, absolutely mind-blowing to imagine this as a sub-plot in a major film! (I guess there's the period gag in Turning Red, but, I don't know, this felt like a very different handling.) Anyways, really interesting stuff about the appreciation/romanticization of rural life vs the city.
Ocean Waves, 1993, Studio Ghibli directed by Tomomi Mochizuki. A somewhat baffling movie about a guy in love with his best friend, who has no interest in girls, trying to be a good friend to the "difficult" girl his friend likes (and/or be closer to her as a triangulation or substitute for being able to be closer to his friend), with a tacked-on ending about how he actually liked the girl the whole time when the sunset scene on the pier with the saxophone music where he's reuniting with his estranged friend got a little too gay. I mean, not to be a delusional slash shipper, but it just did not seem like they set up that ending at all, except that obligatory heterosexuality required it. Or it could be a cultural literacy problem on my part - maybe to the genre-savvy, finding a girl tiresome is always a sign of attraction - but this is not my first-ever Japanese movie with a romance in it, and I feel like they usually give us more than that. (Also another mention of periods, when the girl says she's having hers! Unimaginable in 1990s American animation!)
