MANGA: In This Corner of the World (2016)

 

            I like to watch animated war movies.  There are not that many of them, I guess because war is not an attractive subject for children’s films and studios do not feel adult animated would do well at the box office.  As war movie fans, we should see the advantages of animation in telling war tales.  Until CGI is seamless, I prefer animation. And why search around for the only Tiger tank in the world when you can animate one?  Many of the topics that I would love to see produced could be done in animation.  Let’s face it, we will never see a live action movie about the Battle of Trafalgar.  Turn it over to animators.  One of the best war movies I have seen is “Waltz With Bashir”.  It is not only animated, it is unique in its style.  After seeing hundreds of war movies, I crave movies that are different.  “In This Corner of the World” is one of those. 

            The film is based on a manga.  Manga refers to Japanese comics or graphic novels.  It was directed and co-written by Sunao Katabuchi.  The setting is Hiroshima and Kure in the 1930s and 1940s, but it spends most of its time in 1944-45.  The atomic bombing of Hiroshima is a significant plot development.  The movie was acclaimed and won numerous awards, including the Japanese Academy award for Best Animated Movie.  An extended version with five extra minutes holds the record for longest animated movie. 

            Suzu (voiced by Non) is a teenage girl who lives in a town near Hiroshima.  She is flighty with a vivid imagination.  She daydreams a lot and turns those visuals into beautiful drawings.  When she is eighteen, she has an arranged marriage with Shusaku.  It’s time to grow up.  She moves in with her husband’s family and has to take over her mother-in-law’s chores, like getting water from the community well, cooking, and cleaning the house.  The war does not impact them until 1944.  She sometimes sits on a hillside overlooking the harbor.  She can see the super-battleships Yamato and Musashi.  The war begins to hit home with food rationing and the building of a family bomb shelter.  Her husband gets drafted and she loses relatives.  She suffers a bad injury from a time-delayed bomb.  And then comes 1945.

            “In This Corner of the World” is a good film, but it is a bit overrated.  The animation is great, but not eye-popping.  When she daydreams, the animation takes on a more water-color look.  It does have a very appealing central character in Suzu.  The main theme of the film is contrasting her early happy-go-lucky life to the harsh reality of a losing war.  Her personality goes from cheerful to depressed.  However, although the movie touches on some of the hardships the Japanese civilians faced, the film does not wallow in it.  It might be depressing for Suzu, but you won’t leave the movie depressed.  Partly because the film tacks on a happy ending. Even the Hiroshima bombing is not max tearjerking.  The decision to stay with Suzu, who was living in Kure, instead of focusing on her family that were in the city, must have been a decision to avoid full reality.  The biggest problem with the plot is it covers too great a period of time.  And it jumps years at a time.  Some of the jumps are into situations that are boring. For instance, her marital life sets up the reappearance of the love of her life, but she blandly tells him she is happily married.  No love triangle for this film.  And not a lot of Japanese culture, surprisingly.

            Before you say that you wouldn’t expect an animated film to be hard-hitting, the Japanese produced “Barefoot Gen” and “Grave of the Fireflies”, two movies better than this one.  And those films centered on children.  That’s not to say that you should avoid “In This Corner of the World”, but you need to see those others first.

 

GRADE  =  B-