Ayumu Watanabe (director)
(studio)
97 (length)
10 August 2022 (released)
08 August 2022
The opening sequence where the viewer is introduced into Nikuko’s (Shinobu Ôtake) early peripatetic life, narrated by her daughter Kikuo (Cocomi) is dark, lightened by the intrinsic goodness of the character as she her money is taken and her emotions mangled by men. Eventually following one of these wasters to a coastal village with her daughter. She never finds him and decides to stay getting work at a local restaurant where her larger than life character is a hit with the customers.
Not quite so taken by her mother’s eccentricities is Kikuo who is still somewhat trying to adjust to the town and the school. She’s friends with Maria (Izumi Ishii) and there are the usual clashes with classmate as the hierarchies develop and factions arise, over basketball. Theres age-old international embarrassment of the team picking process that I would guess everyone went through. And there’s boys, especially the intriguing Nino (Natsuki Hanae) who keeps on pulling faces.
So life trundles on with Nikuko working, Kikuo at times lost in her thoughts, providing narration about the school how the factions have left her friendless and Maria on her own, her changing body and aspirations. That changes and there are revelations when having ignored her pain Kikuo is hospitalised with appendicitis.
Fundamentally after stripping away all the japes and buffoonery, talking graveyards and animals this is about the deep love between two very different people making the best of their circumstances. You couldn’t get a greater contrast than Nikuko and Kikuo, the latter seemingly in a state of perpetual embarrassment whenever they are together. Yet there is a bond that transcends everything.
From Kikuo’s perspective this is also about the strains of being a teenager, peer pressure, fitting in and isolation. Looked on sometimes (or possibly dismissed) as just a rite of passage, though laced with unrealising cruelty these can have devastating short and long term affects, which Kikuo does come to realise.
The animation is bold, beautiful and bright with some wonderful flourishes of imagination that are as absurd as they are gorgeous by director Ayumu Watanabe. And yet for all the flamboyance there is an undercurrent of melancholy as the women are casually exploited by men and the girls feel pressure over their bodies and dress. This comes to the fore in the latter half of the film, though these are carefully handled within an excellent script by Satomi Ohshima based on the book by Kanako Nishi’s.