Back from the Dead: Miyazaki again

I haven't posted in several months, so I thought, why not write about something before I get too fed up with trying to type with my broken c and f keys? (Long story, lots of copy/paste.)


In my first post I voiced my disappointment with Hayao/Goro Miyazaki's latest movies, but now I'm starting to hope that their upcoming works will be better.  I recently heard that the 2010 film, Kari-gurashi no Arietti ("The Secret World of Arretty) is due for release in the US this coming February (2012) under the name Arrietty. The plot is based off of Mary Norton's The Borrowers, in which little people (and by "little" I mean tiny, almost mouse-sized, not "vertically challenged") live in humans' houses and "borrow" food and items from around the house, small things that won't be missed but would be useful to the little people, and strive to keep their existence secret from the larger inhabitants of the houses. I never read the book or its sequels, so I don't know much about the plot. In the movie, the main character, Arrietty (who would've guessed?), one of the Borrower children, befriends Sho, the human boy of their house, and she eventually has to prove the existence of the Borrowers, which goes against their code of living in secret.

The movie has been highly praised and acclaimed in Japan for its animation and music (but when are those aspects ever lacking in a Miyazaki film?), and was the highest grossing 2010 movie, according to Wikipedia.  Hayao Miyazaki supervised a new director, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, and as Arrietty was so much better received in Japan than was Tales from Earthsea (which apparently earned Goro Miyazaki the "Worst Director/Worst film" awards), I'm somewhat confident that this will be an enjoyable, well-done movie. Here's the trailer; the only problem I have is that the boy, Sho, looks like a cross between Ashitaka from Princess Mononoke and Howl from Howl's Moving Castle; I wish they could come up with more original character designs.

Currently, Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli are working on a new movie, something about a "Poppy Hill", but since it hasn't even been released in Japan yet, I'll wait to talk about it until a Western release is in the works. On another note, it seems that everyone else whose opinions matter loved Ponyo, making me wonder if I'm the only one who thought that the idea of two (one and a half?) 5-year-old children being made to promise to love each other forever is ridiculous. I might be able to say that they mean platonic, innocent friendship love, if not for the kiss at the end. Well, I stand by my opinion on Ponyo, that it has nice animation but a weak plot, no matter what the critics say. I have to say it's probably not worse than Earthsea, but it's got to be at the bottom of films that Hayao has directed.