This cartoon was turned into "Various Tanuki". I feel that "Heisei Tanuki War" is better, because "war" is more important than "change" in the movie, and all "changes" are for "war". Produced by Studio Ghibli, directed by Takahata. The film is two hours long and I watched it in two parts. The film produced 15 years ago is still very good to watch now, and the embarrassing situation of nature and people reflected in the film, this topic, probably I will not see it out of date in my lifetime.
The biggest impression after watching this film is that it is full of "Japanese flavor", which is not very common in Hayao Miyazaki or Studio Ghibli's films-many of Miyazaki's films dilute the identity of the protagonist. For the background, what's more, there are several very "westernized" films, such as "Porco Rosso" and "Witch's Delivery Service". The second is that the film has both funny and harsh sides.
I don't know anything about Japanese folk culture, but the Japanese flavor in this film is too strong to be experienced. First of all, it is a very special choice to use the civet cat as the protagonist. The first fickle fox in Chinese folklore is the fox (the fox is obviously an animal good at illusion in Japan), and then there are snake spirits and tree spirits. In any case, there are no civet cats. With the exception of "civet cats for princes", civet cats are almost completely absent in Chinese folklore. The civet cat can change its human form by putting a leaf on its head. This should be unique to Japanese folklore. For another kind of animal or a country, this story won't hold true. In addition, the tanukis are so powerful that they can smash the testicles of people are really impressive. This is also from the ancient Japanese culture. The film even directly quoted the original painting by Hiroshige Ando, the one that testicles hit people: http://jandan.net/2008/04/22/kage-e-japanese-shadow-pictures.html
Ghost Parade, more Japan can no longer be Japan. When I watched it, I found that many monsters were familiar. After searching, I found that I had seen it in a post on Fried Egg! Most of the monsters are from the “Edo Period Yokai in Japan” drawn by Hiroshige Andohttp://jandan.net/2008/02/28/japan-ghost.html . Hayao Miyazaki and his colleagues really love monsters, and the big head that can jump around is reappearing in Spirited Away. As for the marrying foxes, the villains in kimonos dancing in groups, and the red and green gods, all come from Japanese folklore and folklore. Even this piece of music is the most traditional Japanese music. This can be regarded as a general respect for Japanese traditional culture by Studio Ghibli, right?
Speaking of monsters, this is actually an interesting topic. Why is there such a complicated system of monsters and so many weird images of monsters in Japanese culture? On the weird image, there are many in China's "Shan Hai Jing", but that was in ancient times! The Edo period was the Ming and Qing dynasties in China. At that time, there were all kinds of gods in the Chinese folks, but the ancient Chinese were obviously not good at monsters. There are indeed a lot of monsters in "Journey to the West", but they are similar to each other. They are nothing but mountain spirit tree monsters. The level of richness and weirdness is quite inferior to that of Japanese monsters. As for the West, since Catholicism and Christianity dominated the world, I am afraid that there have been no monsters but demons. I don’t know which culture has a group of monsters that can rival Japan? There are so many monsters, perhaps partly because there is no dominant religion, but it can't be fully explained from this point.
Studio Ghibli works often have serious and profound themes, and the stories are always interesting. But this film is funny and funny, which is not often found in other films. The image of the civet cats, the illusion of the civet cats, the civet cats have meetings, the civet cats watch TV, and the civet cats dance and sing. All the scenes are gimmicky. Studio Ghibli's consistent luxuriant and gorgeous imagination makes this film shine everywhere. Taking the transformation of a civet cat, not only is it transformed into a variety of images (including people), even the civet cat itself changes in different shapes with changes in mood and situation, sometimes it is a more portrait of a civet cat, sometimes it is a cute type with more exaggerated and simple lines. , Most of the time it is an anthropomorphic civet cat type-each one is very vivid. The illusion part reached a climax during the ghost parade, which is really exciting!
However, under the appearance of the funny story, Takahata Hoon's attitude towards humans is very strict. Miyazaki later had this tendency in "Princess Mononoke." In this cartoon, due to the perspective of a civet cat, human beings are not objects of mercy and beloved, and there is no harmony between humans and nature in the "totoro". Man is a complete predator, but the civet cat can't be oppressed, and rises up angrily to defend his homeland with illusion. Some civet cats even killed people, and Takahata took it for granted. In the end, the civet cats exhausted all their strength and transformed into the most beautiful scene: the green mountains, clear water, fields, green trees, flowers, and butterflies all came back, and the pastoral scenery replaced the gloomy urban scene. This is the world's "as it is". Both humans and animals relive their childhood-the perfect world that can never be returned. This should be regarded as a ruthless condemnation of mankind.
I couldn't help crying again (I'm sorry, the tear point is really low), and the result behind is also very sad: in order to survive, the civet cat who can illusion has to go to the city and become a human life, day after day. Sun and Earth squeezed the subway to go to work, while barely supporting, while thinking: how can human beings live like this.
This film once again made me aware of the contradictions in my worldview. On the one hand, I feel that every life is precious and should be cherished. On the other hand, it is really hard not to have a sense of self-loathing to be a human being-look at what we have done to this earth! The world finally transformed by the civet cats, without those parts related to people, is actually the scene described by Alan Weisman in "A World Without Us": As long as humans disappear, nature will slowly take over the earth again. Slowly erase all traces of humanity.
Can the exquisite thoughts and perfect art created by humans be able to withstand the destruction of nature by humans? Is there really a need for such creatures as humans? No one on Earth should be better. This is a problem that I can't figure out, and I often have the most pessimistic view on these issues.
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