Pom Poko
My Neighbors the Yamadas
both written and directed by Isao Takahata
Yamadas is based on the comic strip of Hisaichi Ishii
While Hayao Miyazaki (Spirited Away) reaps the major awards and media attention, his Studio Ghibli colleague Isao Takahata appears the more versatile animation director. That might be why the lesser-known filmmaker is lesser known; he lacks a representational style while Miyazaki movies are easily recognized as such. Takahata, who doesn’t even have a bio on IMDB.com, is also less creative and less effective in much of his writing, but as a director his work is also less complicated, less phantasmagoric, more emotive. His Grave of the Fireflies has been known to make a grown man cry.
Thanks to Disney’s deal with Studio Ghibli, Takahata’s last two films have finally been released on DVD in America (they don’t get theatrical distribution like Miyazaki’s). Containing extremely different stories, different designs and different techniques, Pom Poko (1994) and My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999) are separate delights for grown-ups with a real appreciation for animated films (not to be confused with those who still watch Scooby-Doo while eating cereal in the evening).
Pom Poko is easily confused as a Disney-type cartoon, telling a story of adorable raccoons dealing with diminished wildlife as a result of Tokyo’s urban expansions. Think Robin Hood meets Miyazaki’s more fantastical Princess Mononoke, which shares the environmental message. But despite the cute, anthropomorphic surface, it can get pretty violent and crude. The raccoons begin their campaign against the humans by killing construction workers, though not too graphically. Whenever the animals are injured or killed, they are drawn alternatively more realistic or more sketched, either way giving them less distinction as loveable characters. Many of the themes, including terrorism, prostitution and abstinence would never show up in a Disney feature, even if they were deep enough in subtext that children might not notice them.
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