Anime On the Big Screen: “Children of the Sea”

Venue: Dendy Cinemas, Level 2, North Quarter, Canberra Centre, 148 Bunda Street, Canberra City, ACT
Date: Sunday 22 December 2019
Distributor: Madman Entertainment
Format: Digital Projection, Japanese dialogue with English subtitles
Length: 111 minutes
Production Date: 2019
Currently on Home Video in English (as of writing): No

A couple of weeks on from my last outing in the cinema and another anime film from Madman is here. Admittedly I delayed going to see this film because in the previous week I really felt I wasn’t in the mood for it. The weather hasn't been all that great for venturing outside anyway. Over the last couple of weeks, Canberra has been blanketed in smoke from fires east of the city. The amount of smoke as waxed and waned, but it seems that it will stick around for few more weeks unfortunately. After some really horrible smoky and hot days, today the temperature sunk to less than 24°C and the smoke had dissipated. Despite being a few days before Christmas, Canberra Centre wasn’t as crowded as I expected. The Kingpin bowling/party centre had finally opened the day before. It wasn’t that crowed from what I could see and it looks like an overblown gaming centre to be honest.

In cinemas only a week after “Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll”, this film is obviously the film Madman are banking on out of the two. As I said in my previous review, Madman has actually printed up posters for the film and in this cinema, it was placed in a very prominent position. If a limited release film stays in cinemas for week or so, it seems Dendy changes the screening times; now one session at 10am and a second around 6pm. I opted for the earlier one. The screening also took place in the newer part of the cinemas, which feels divorced from the main section. 15 people showed up for this screening including three families. One family and a person who came by themselves left cinema before the film finished. Maybe with good reason as I’ll explain;

Junior high school student Ruka Azumi lives in small seaside town where fishing seems to be the main industry. It’s summer holidays but she continues to go to school in order to practice with the handball sports club she is a member of. Ruka is extremely happy that she will get to do this every day and is looking forward to the holidays. However, on the first day of practice, Ruka is deliberately tripped by a teammate who accuses her of being too enthusiastic. Later during the match, Ruka purposely elbows her in the nose, almost breaking it. Both her teammates and the supervising teacher are of course unhappy with her. The teacher reprimands her and says if she’s not going to apologise, she shouldn’t bother coming back to training.

Pissed off and annoyed at the situation and herself, Ruka is at a complete loss as what to do for the rest of the summer. Ruka can’t really go home as her mother expects her to be training. The fact her mother is also a drunk and hard to get along with doesn't help. She hides away from the rest of her team members and frequents places where no one goes. Ruka eventually decides to go to the aquarium. When she was small, she had a strange experience where a giant whale, she refers to as the ghost, appeared in the main tank. Her father Masaaki works there and she hopes she can help him in his work over summer. While lurking around the entrance, one of the staff members recognises Ruka, gives her a visitor’s pass and leads her to the entrance to the pumps behind the main tanks of the aquarium where her father is currently working.

While searching for her father, she spots something lurking about in the shadows, then inside a wetsuit, before jumping into a small tank. Surprisingly it turns out not to be a sealion, but a mysterious boy her age who calls himself Umi. Ruka’s father explains that Umi and another boy named Sora were discovered in the wild and were apparently raised by a herd of dugongs (no, I am not making this up). Umi has become acclimatised to the ocean so much, that he can’t go long periods without his skin being wet. Still bummed out by what happened at the handball club the previous day, Ruka returns to school, but lurks about so no one can see her. Hiding in a classroom, she hears a noise and believes she has been caught by the teacher, when in fact it is Umi who has been searching for her. The pair of them escape the school and head for the ocean.

There he explains to her that he wants to show her the Will-o'-the-wisp that will appear that night. Two lights speed over the town and across the ocean. Ruka is very excited by this phenomenon, but can’t seem to get any sense out of Umi as to what she just saw. In another meeting with Umi, he heads into the ocean and Ruka meets Sora who is sitting on the shoreline. Sora is far paler than Umi and seems much less friendly. However, the pair of them become close, mainly due to Umi’s influence and the trio begin to have adventures together. Ruka soon develops a connection to what is happening in the sea. She can feel something is going on, like she has a form of ESP or psychic connection with it. It soon becomes clear to everyone that something odd is happening in the ocean. A large number of deep-sea creatures are washed up on the shoreline. Several of the local marine biologists have also been investigating Umi and Sora as well as the two meteorites that were seen crashing into the ocean. All are linked and it is clear something big is about to happen.

This film is based on a five volume manga series of the same name (though the literal title is “Marine Mammal Children”), written and illustrated by Daisuke Igarashi who also wrote the screenplay for the film. This adaptation was animated by Studio 4°C, a studio with a relatively low output (but generally high-quality animation), whose previous films have included “Tekkonkinkreet”, “Mind Game” and the “Berserk: The Golden Age Arc” trilogy. The director was Ayumu Watanabe who is best known as the director of “Space Brothers” TV series and follow up film and the more recent “Doraemon” movies. The score was composed by none other than Joe Hisaishi, who is best known to anime fans for his soundtrack work on many of Studio Ghibli’s films.

I might as well start off discussing the best parts of the film first. The animation is quite spectacular. One of the most impressive sequences involves Ruka running from the school and into the town’s streets in one continuous take. The backgrounds are of course CG (though look completely hand drawn), something that Studio 4°C are masters of. I have read some comments from fans and even in some film reviews that the animation is scrappy. This is utter nonsense. What people mean by this is that they don’t like the character designs, which are for the most part quite atypical of most modern character design. While the story may at first glance may look like a typical summer teen film in a stereotypical setting, this film is anything but. Apart from the mystical aspects of the film I’ll talk about later, the movie is clearly about outsiders, in particular Ruka who doesn’t seem to fit into her small community at all.

While the interactions and adventures between Ruka, Umi and Sora are fun and quite entertaining, it soon becomes quite clear that we are being primed for a reveal of the developing mysteries out in the ocean. Something is obviously wrong out there; there’s news bulletins stating whales are entering the Hudson River in New York, a large amount of sea life is congregating just off the coast and even the captive sea creatures at the aquarium take notice, with all of them looking simultaneously towards a single point somewhere out in the ocean. Couple this with the previously mentioned deep sea creatures being washed ashore and the scenes of local marine biologists and other sequences of scientists which seem to be linked to the military or some unnamed government organisation. There are also several mentions of a “festival” as well and other events and phenomena vaguely hinted at. But little of the material presented to the audience is of a scientific kind. Towards the midpoint of the film, Ruka meets a local marine biologist; a young long-haired man named Anglade. Despite being a scientist, none of what he says to Ruka is very scientific at all; it’s all rather philosophical and spiritual instead.

Later in the film Ruka meets another local marine biologist, an elderly lady only known as Dede. She is somehow even vaguer than Anglade. A third marine biologist connected to the aquarium called Jim, is at least seen to be collecting data on Umi and Sora, and the phenomena occurring in the ocean. But none of the dialogue from these characters really seems to advance the plot one iota or gives any real explanations as to what is happening on screen. Just before the mid-way point, the dialogue from these characters in particular becomes incredibly ponderous. Pretty much all of it leads nowhere and the film is filled with tantalising clues to the mysteries, but they all ultimately lead to dead ends.

At the mid-way point of the film, the plot veers quite sharply from what is a somewhat normal movie about a young teenage girl enjoying her summer break with two mysterious boys from the sea, into an incredibly abstract and quite bizarre visual representation of what seems to be the rebirth of the universe. I think. I’m still not quite too sure. I’ve read comparisons with this section of the film to the birth of the universe sequence from Terrence Malick’s “Tree of Life”, which is a reasonable comparison. Leading up to this part of the film, it is clear that Ruka is the catalyst to what happens at this point (Ruka has been swallowed by a large creature prior to this sequence). However, the meaning behind all of this seems rather muddled. Is it the literal rebirth of the universe? Has all aquatic life been reborn? Has Ruka been given a vision in order to save the creatures of the ocean from human destruction?

Considering nothing seems to have really changed at all after this sequence, it just seems even more befuddling and odd. I began to wonder if Ruka imagined the whole thing, but that doesn’t account for the marine biologists’ odd behaviour. Why are there scenes in that sequence of the government scientists discovering what seems to be a number of abandoned boats in the middle of the ocean, with one having thousands of dollars’ worth of banknotes scattered inside? What hell does it all mean? Even leading up to that sequence, none of the actions they take, nor the dialogue contributes at all to an explanation for what is happening. For example, Jim deletes data relating to Umi and Sora suggesting that it will help the boys with what will happen next. However, it has already been explained that the data collected on both indicates they are normal human boys.

From what I can gather, the manga contains a fair bit of important background info about the world and characters, that is oddly not divulged in the movie. Unexplained in the film (except for a couple lines of dialogue from Dede towards the end), Umi and Sora aren’t the only “Children of the Sea”. Apparently, there have been several other “messengers of the sea” in the past. You would assume that the discovery of two boys raised by dugongs would be an extremely important scientific one, so why are they being held at some old rundown aquarium in a small Japanese fishing town? Despite the numerous scenes they have in the film, there is no real link with the mysterious government scientists to any of the other characters in the film. They feel really divorced from the film as such. As I previously mentioned, the original mangaka wrote the screenplay. I know it must be difficult to condense a five volume manga into less than two hours of film, but so much material has been cut the movie feels deliberately vague and incredibly hard to decipher.

Though I was really annoyed by the film upon first viewing it, over the last few days I have begun to really think about the imagery and what the movie means, if anything. The setting of a typical rundown and rusted Japanese fishing village, with its obligatory aquarium which many coastal towns have in Japan, is really well done and looks true to life. Some the story setups, especially the fact two boys were raised by dugongs, seem really silly and laughable, as does a bunch of scientists who speak about the phenomena in the ocean in vague and spiritual language. I understand that mangaka Daisuke Igarashi has publicly stated he wants the audience to make up their own minds about what happens in the story, but I would have preferred if there was a more realistic and scientific basis to it. I also felt there were far too many red herrings in the film.

While the animation is fantastic and the relationships between Ruka, Umi and Sora are well written, the vagueness and abstract manner of the second half of the film coupled with a lack of clear answers and seemingly a sense of nothing has changed at the end of the film kind of irked me. As you can tell by how much I have written about this film, I have thought about it a lot over the last few days. So much so, that I think I’ll need to see it again before I can give it any sort of score out of ten. Note there is an extended post credits sequence at the end of the film, so don’t leave the cinema before the credits finish scrolling.

Anime On the Big Screen: “Violet Evergarden: Eternity and the Auto Memory Doll”

Venue: Dendy Cinemas, Level 2, North Quarter, Canberra Centre, 148 Bunda Street, Canberra City, ACT
Date: Thursday 5 December 2019
Distributor: Madman Entertainment
Format: Digital Projection, Japanese dialogue with English subtitles
Length: 90 minutes
Production Date: 2019
Currently on Home Video in English (as of writing): No

The latter half of the year has seen some big anime films in cinemas including “Promare” and what is easily the biggest anime film of the year, “Weathering with You”. Unsurprisingly this year's Japanese Film Festival was utterly disappointing. Though the live action fare in the line up was a great improvement on previous years, there was absolutely no anime at all. Masaaki Yuasa’s “Ride Your Wave” and the latest "Detective Conan" film screened in all capitals except Canberra, which was baffling. Dendy have settled into a pattern with anime screenings; twice a day in the evening which isn’t too bad. The Canberra Centre has cordoned off the old food court below Dendy. It’s now apparently going to become some sort of bowling/party centre. But several months on and there seems to be no firm date when it’s going to open. It looks ugly as sin and forces patrons to hunt for food at the south end of the Canberra Centre, which is OK, but I much preferred the food court below Dendy.

Next week “Children of the Sea” is screening at Dendy and I was surprised that a poster for the film was put in a very prominent place at the entrance. The film has been to several film festivals in the country, so I’m assuming that Madman think this anime film has more of chance with a general audience than their regular fare. This “Violet Evergarden” film, is the first of two scheduled for release, and of course had promotion limited to social media. I really wasn’t expecting a great deal of people at this screening, but 18 people showed up. The weird thing was initially the entire cinema audience (including me) was entirely made up of white middle-aged men. I wondered if this was the core audience Kyoto Animation were aiming for. As we got closer to screening time more patrons showed up, mostly younger men. In the end it was a very male dominated audience with only three women, most of whom came by themselves.

For those unfamiliar with the story, it is set in a turn of the 20th century, post war, fictional Germanic/European-like country called Leidenschaftlich, the original TV series is centred around the titular character, a young girl around the age of 14. Violet is an orphan and former child solider, essentially used as a killing machine for the military. She has been fighting in the long war since she was 10. Severely injured at the end of the war, Violet has both of arms replaced with highly articulate metal prosthetics. A former Major in the army, Claudia Hodgins, takes in Violet after promising his friend, Major Gilbert Bougainvillea, to do so. Having a strong attachment to the missing, presumed dead, Gilbert (who gave her a name and cared for her) and being unable to adjust from the highly regimented military life, Violet finds it hard to adapt to her new chosen career, an Auto Memory Doll at Claudia’s CH Postal Company.

These are women who are essentially ghost writers for people who want to send letters to loved ones or even write manuscripts, and are especially important in an era with a high level of illiteracy. While her military training sets Violet up to a be a proficient and highly accurate typist, her experiences in childhood and as solider on the frontline have severely blunted her empathy and feelings for others. But over the course of the series she learns how to interpret and express the feelings of her clients via the letters she writes for them. In doing so she begins to regain her humanity and emotions back, becoming less machine like. After writing a series of publicly published letters for the princess of the Drossel Royal Family to her fiancé, she becomes an in-demand Auto Memory Doll who touches the lives of many the clients who request her services.

This film is based upon the second chapter of the “Violet Evergarden Gaiden” light novel. This light novel is a collection of side stories separate to the two main light novels in the series, hence the reason why this film is referred to in promotional material as a “side story”. From what I can gather, this film takes place about mid-way through the TV series, though it could easily take place directly after it. Violet has been commissioned by the Drossel Royal family to be a tutor and handmaiden for a period of three months for a young woman named Isabella York who will soon make her debut in society. Though the young woman’s family is part of the aristocracy, she certainly doesn’t act like it. Isabella is quite sickly, feels like she is trapped in her girls only boarding school and initially resents the presence of Violet. She also feels that the other girls at the school only want to be friends with her and others in order to make connections with other aristocratic families.

However, as the weeks go on as Violet trains her in etiquette and deportment, Isabella starts to bond and open up to her. Isabella later reveals that her upbringing wasn’t exactly a privileged one and that the current predicament she finds herself in was in fact a sacrifice she had to make in order to keep a loved one safe. She has come to regret the choice she has made, but felt she had no other choice. Though she has not been tasked with her usual Auto Memory Doll work, Violet helps Isabella write a letter to Isabella's loved one. The second part of the film takes place three years after Violet’s three month stay at the boarding school. A young girl named Taylor Bartlett arrives unannounced at the CH Postal Company. She announces she wishes to see Violet who had promised her in a letter several years ago to come to her if she needed anything.

It is soon revealed that Taylor has run away from the orphanage she was at and that she wants a job at the postal company. She decides to become a postman after taking a liking to the young postman Benedict Blue, whom she wants to be an apprentice to, much to his annoyance. After Violet pleads with Claudia to take her on as an apprentice, they soon discover that she is illiterate. Benedict along with Violet and the other staff develop a training schedule for Taylor who takes her work seriously. Taylor reveals that she would like to write a letter to the person who cared for her. Unfortunately, she seems to have disappeared several years ago. Benedict is tasked with the almost impossible mission of tracing her last known whereabouts and following every last possible lead to find where she is now residing.

Unlike the story arc in the original TV series where the focus was almost always solely on Violet and her development from an almost robotic child solider to a fully functioning human being (via her regaining her emotions and empathy for others), this film focuses on the client’s stories. Admittedly this was also a large focus of the TV series as well, but as Violet interacted with and preformed her writing duties for her clients, she not only changed the lives and touched others hearts, she regained her humanity and developed as a person too. The big change in this film is Violet moving away from her normal job as Auto Memory Doll and being tasked with guiding a reluctant young woman in ways of the aristocracy by teaching her etiquette and deportment. Admittedly this was hard for me to swallow. In the beginning of the TV series, Violet is rather direct and cold. I understand that she has learnt much in the time she became an Auto Memory Doll, but her extensive knowledge of etiquette amongst members of the aristocracy seems a bit implausible.

In reality the somewhat implausible set up for the first half of the film is pretty much an excuse to explore the relationship that develops between Isabella and Violet. This is probably the best part of the film. Ever so slowly the bonds develop between the two. Isabella may seem rather bratty, but we soon learn why she seems so out of place in an all-girl boarding school for the rich. While I have seen some reviews suggest the relationship is explicitly a Yuri one, I think people are projecting their wishes onto the story. Sure, there are some hints of it at various scenes but it’s not all that explicit, and even if it was it's a one way street with Violet not really reciprocating. This section of the film culminates in a dress rehearsal for the debutante’s ball with Violet playing the male role as Isabella’s dance partner, in an outfit that is half coat and tails and half dress. The dance choreography, the focus on Isabella initial nervousness, and latter joy, and the exquisite details of the ballroom easily make this sequence the highlight of the film. The section of the film does feel somewhat similar to Oscar and Marie Antoinette's relationship in “Rose of Versailles”.

The second half of the film is more subdued and light-hearted with the focus on the young girl, Taylor. I have read reviews which suggest the transition between the two halves is disjointed and doesn’t work well. Without giving away spoilers, I can only say this is complete bunkum. The second half of the film is clearly set up during the first half. The big surprise in this half of the film is the focus on mailman Benedict Blue, who rather reluctantly takes on the role of training Taylor Bartlett. While Benedict did come off as rather self-centred in the TV series, here the screenwriters make him more likeable and shows that he has far more empathy for others than he actually lets on. Taylor’s story may be too saccharine for some, especially with the tear-jerking finale, but I think the screenplay is well written enough that it doesn’t become maudlin.

Apart from an incredibly emotional climax, in which two people are destined to be apart from each other forever due to class structures and the societal mores of the time, a lot of focus of the film is how Leidenschaftlich is moving away from its militaristic past and into a new age. The city is seen to be in state of transformation with a large Eiffel Tower-like structure, that can be seen from almost everywhere in the city, under construction. As time has passed, subtle changes have been made to the main and secondary character designs. However, it is Violet’s work colleague and fellow Auto Memory Doll, Iris Cannary, who has transformed the most. So much so that I initially did not recognise her.

This film of course is the first anime to be released by Kyoto Animation after the shocking and devastating arson attack on their main studio in Fushimi ward, Kyoto. Breaking away from company practice of not crediting staffers who haven’t worked with the company for less than a year, the name of every single person who worked on the film, including those who perished in the incident, appears during the end credits. Putting aside the content of the film, having the knowledge of that by itself makes the film a very haunting experience tinged with sadness. Wrapping up, I think this movie looks fantastic and is really well produced. While it does feel like two TV episodes have been extended and edited together, both parts of the film complement each other and work well as a whole. I think to a degree Violet’s transformation as a handmaiden who schools a young woman on the etiquette of the aristocracy is a bit hard to swallow, but I could suspend my disbelief. The film fits in well with the TV series and I am looking forward to the sequel film which should appear in cinemas next year. 7.5 out of 10.