Studio Ghibli Studio enthusiasts will argue over its best cut feature film for ages. Many will say it is My Neighbor Totoro (1988), while some will mention Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) or Spirited Away (2001). Frankly speaking, I am not sure what the best answer is, although one film I can point out unhesitatingly is Ghibli’s most underrated: Isao Takahata’s fable The Tale of Princess Kaguya.
The movie is a modernization of the Japanese fable The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. This is where it gets interesting. One spring, a poor bamboo cutter finds a golden looking glass in a stalk of bamboo. He takes her home but then she entirely changes into a baby. The little girl grows quickly, and throughout her short lived childhood, the woodcutter keeps sifting through the bamboo forest and keeps discovering things like gold and tresured cloth. He takes it as a prophecy, and with the wealth, he acquired, brings the now grown up girl to the capital to turn her into a princess and find her a worthy husband, which is what the prophecy said. The girl Kaguya would have been disappointed if she were to live in the forest.
As for Isao Takahata, who passed on in 2018, he was never as famous as Miyazaki. It can be said of the two that it is he who is probably more of a director. The first feature he directed for Ghibli was Grave of the Fireflies, probably the most heartbreaking animation ever, and featured alongside with Miyazaki’s cheerful My Neighbor Totoro. His second film was Only Yesterday – a rather surprising intention toward a so-called realistic drama – and for the third he made Pom Poko, a fantasy set in rural Japan in which tanuki can shapeshift to other creatures. The 4th of the works, My Neighbors the Yamadas was taken from a comic strip which became a bestseller and was in?a sketchbook style of rough pencil crisp rather than the flat look. It took 14 years for Takahata to switch on the fifth Ghibli picture and once again, it was a matter of changing the animation style. There is such a nice film “Princess Kaguya”. This is screen adaptation of a good, old simple story of a princess. Manga of this folk tale is accompanied with striking illustrations in watercolors which support the plot.
Radiantly beautiful is this film I would call this one. This is certainly not as intricate a visual stylistic as you would find in most of the other Ghibli productions: rather it is somewhat gestural and does require some time to adjust to. It changes too, it does become more or less colorful or detailed depending upon the feeling and intensity of the different parts of the scenes. Likewise it is also astonishingly slow film. For a narrative that can be quickly told in about one and a half hours, it takes in 137 minutes. When some self control has been practiced, it has a mean very much simple explanations. So the last episode nevertheless is very saturated with emotions and is rather tragic – and thanks to that extra time it really does feel so effective. This is not an especially friendly film to children, though at the same time there is nothing particularly offensive about it. It is a tragedy, and what a despairing but thoughtful one at that of an ignore whilst quickening a historical basis and a defining adult perspective. It is aesthetically pleasing yet caters to some level of depth to be graciously interceded.
Having worked with Studio Ghibli Hayao Miyazaaki once, Joe Hisaishi will get use with you oriented crafted orchestral score. Nonetheless, he has made sure there does not seem any disconnection from the ghibli culture though the film is on the slower end and is visually quite unique. Although, commercially the movie failed, artistically it is such an accomplishment that one can apply unqualified modifier to it. It is not the ordinary anime but the conceptualized and the artistic flab-free anime. This was Takahata’s last film, which is understandable as it is quite a democracy and there is no moving past Pom Poko still it is Takahata’s best film.
Watch The Tale of Princess Kaguya on Kisscartoon
Read Also,
