T w e n t y S i d e d

Den Beste has an article up on Miyazaki Hayao. He talks a bit about Princess Mononoke. Other people (such as Alexander Doneau) have reviewed the movie as well, and almost nobody comments on what I thought was the biggest flaw of the movie.

(Note that I saw the movie months ago. What I’m writing here are the impressions I had right after seeing the movie. I’ve forgotten the names of some of the key locations and some of the minor characters since then, so please forgive the lack of specifics, or if my chronology isn’t perfect.)

I’m thinking of the village where most of the action takes place. The women in that village were very callous and needlessly mean to their men. As we’re introduced to the village, the men are returning from a deadly task. They’ve been out of the village for a few days, and their reward as they get home is a lot of verbal abuse from their wives. The wives then begin gushing over the young and handsome Ashitaka as if their husbands weren’t even there. They openly and brazenly fawn over Ashitaka in front of their husbands, who were just out risking their lives for the village.

The guys are mostly too fat or too skinny. Most are nearing middle age. They are drawn as very un-handsome. So, they are more or less like any other random selection of men you’ll find: not buff heroes, but regular guys. But their wives aren’t any bargain either, and the men seem willing to go out and risk their necks (under the command of a woman, I might add) on behalf of the village. In return, the women never have a single nice thing to say about them. Even after being out of the village for a while, the men and women sit apart from each other at mealtime, and the women toss more shame their way as they eat. I guess these married couples hate each other so much they can’t stand to have meals together, even after being apart for a few days?

The lack of respect between the men and women in the village was awful. If you swapped the gender roles and had the women risking their lives while the men remained at camp drooling over the sexy new princess in town, you would expect them to get some sort of comeupance before the story ended. You’d want to see the men appreciate the sacrifice the women make for them, or at least stop verbally humiliating them in front of everyone else. And since we’re dreaming, an apology might be good for everyone’s well-being. This never happens. In fact, as far as I could tell the movie seemed to think I should side with the women. I didn’t.

Near the end of the movie one of the men is asleep. (It’s the middle of the night and he’d been taking part in an ill-advised battle the previous day. Again, under the command of a woman.) His wife is there beside him and as she sees him sleeping with his mouth open she grudingly admits that he’s (I can’t remember the exact words) a big oaf but she loves him anyway. That was it. During the whole movie only one of the women admitted that her husband wasn’t all bad. Of course, she said it while he was asleep, and she couldn’t say it without insulting him first.

I hated the whole village. I thought the men were fools to put up with all the abuse, and idiots to follow their misguided commander. I thought the women were awful, mean-spirited harpies who didn’t even deserve the shabby husbands they had. Disliking a majority of the characters in the story sort of ruined it for me. Yet nobody else that saw the movie was bothered by this. (Or at least, nobody mentioned it in their review.) Was I reading it wrong? Was I misunderstanding their relationship? Was it just the English dub that portrayed the women this way? Did their dialog come across differently in the sub version? I seem to be the only person with this reaction, and I have to wonder why.

It’s my least favorite of all of Miyazaki’s films that I’ve seen so far (I’ve seen most of them) and obviously it still bugs me when I think about it.

Just so I don’t end this rant on a sour note, I’ll add that I emphatically agree with Steven’s assesment of Spirited Away: It’s Miyazaki’s best film, and a real treat. (Also, note that it has a Tomatometer rating of 98%!)

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Don McClane has a new anime blog.

And so another perfectly respectable blogger falls in with a bunch of these “japanimation” types I keep hearing about. What a shame.

It always starts small: just a few gateway shows on the cartoon network, or maybe watching a seemingly innocent anime with a friend, “just to see what all the fuss is about”. Pretty soon they’re running one of these anime blog things, learning Japanese, calling themselves otaku, and hanging out with girls dressed up like Beldandy.

Parents: Talk to your kids about the dangers of Japanimation today.

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.

Kino’s Journey is a fantastic series. Kino travels from one land to another by motorcycle, visiting some very strange and unexpected towns and cities along the way. Most places she visits are more or less isolated, and only hear of other countries through travelers like Kino. Each land has different customs, technology levels, political structure, etc. To me it felt like a series of Twilight Zone episodes.

Which brings me to my favorite episode of the series. In this case, it was Kino who adopted the wrong solution. But instead of pounding the point home, the story let me follow Kino through her reasoning. It used my expectations against me, and taught me early on that I shouldn’t jump to conclusions with this series. It was a bit disturbing and stayed with me for quite a while after I saw it. Single-episode spoilers follow:

Continue reading ⟩⟩ “Kino’s Journey”

Shamus Young is a programmer, an author, and nearly a composer. He works on this site full time. If you'd like to support him, you can do so via Patreon or PayPal.