Studio Ghibli: A Retrospective, Part Thirteen - My Neighbours The Yamadas

Side-Note : I started writing this article mere weeks before the death of its beloved director Isao Takahata. I am going to keep the text the same but I will be doing a little eulogy to him at the end. 

I think I've been a little bit too harsh to My Neighbours The Yamadas in the past. I mean, it's light, fluffy and was unfortunately released between two of the greatest films of all time, Princess Mononoke and Spirited Away. It's aimless, plotless, with no over-arcing theme and is basically just a series of vignettes. It is also way too long for this concept (clocking in at 105 minutes when 80 would have sufficed). It also has the barrier of the animation, seemingly being less sophisticated than other Ghibli films. However, despite all of this, I actually found myself oddly invested in this charming little film about the family life of a standard Japanese family, the Yamadas, on my second viewing. There's no great environmental message or magical whimsy - just a series of fun little shorts about this oddly likeable and well-defined family. 

Following a few years of silence after Pom Poko, Isao Takahata turned his hand to adapting the popular yonkoma (4-panel "gag" Japanese comics) series Nono-chan by Hisaichi Ishii. In a startling shift from the lovingly handcrafted worlds of previous Ghibli films, My Neighbours The Yamadas was to be the first completely digital production. This was done in an effort by Takahata to accurately re-create the style of watercolour paintings as opposed to the more traditional cel-style animation seen in previous Ghibli films. The result is a unique and gorgeously rendered film, though it was arguably mastered on Takahata's next film The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. 

So, how do I describe the plot of Yamadas when there basically isn't one? The film follows a traditional nuclear Japanese family. There is Father Yamada, Takashi, and Mother Yamada, Matsuko who fill the roles of office worker and house-wide respectively. They share their home with Matsuko's elderly mother Shige and have two children, a teenager named Noboru and a young girl called Nonoko. They also own a seemingly non-plussed dog called Pochi. The film is basically a series of vignettes, that occasionally go into the realms of metaphorical fantasy sequences, but are mostly grounded in a cartoony take on the "real-world". The shorts cover stories such as losing Nonoke in a department store, Takashi dealing with a loud group of bikers in the neighbourhood, Matsuko trying to make sushi, Shige contemplating what is little of her life is left or Noboru trying to get close to his dad. It's fairly wide-ranging and we get to see these characters in various and interesting scenarios, always returning to the humour at the centre of the film and the undying love the family have for each other. Many of the shorts are punctuated by haikus that poetically sum up the short, including ones from Basho, Buson and Santoka.

(l:r) Matsuko, Noboru, Takashi, Nonoko, Shige - the Yamadas

I think what holds Yamadas together, as opposed to being a formless mess, is the well-definied personalities of the characters. They're not ground-breaking in anyway and do fall into very traditional roles but their personalities are just ... lovely! Takashi is the over-worked dad, slightly divorced from the day-to-day life of the Yamada house-hold, but is ultimately something of a goof-ball who loves his family. Equally goofy is Matsuko, the put upon mother, who tends to day-dream and get lost in herself. Probably the most grounded is the very serious Noboru, the teenage son, who is going through big changes but is, when he lets his guard down, as equally daffy as the rest of his family. Nonoke is the cute foil to many of the family antics and has several funny punchlines to the family's antics. My favourite of the lot though is probably the grandma, Shige, who has a wicked and very wry sense of humour. 

I guess I can talk about some of my favourite stories in the film. "A Family Crisis" opens the film in a fun way, with the family accidentally leaving Nonoko behind at a local department store. The frustration and attempts to get back to the store quickly lead to some great humour though it becomes clear that Nonoko can pretty much take care of herself as she helps another lost child find his mother. It's cute and sets the tone for the film perfectly. "Father As Role Model" is a fun one, in which Takashi sees the first falling snow of the year and desperately tries to pull the family away from the TV to take a picture of them together. Another cute short, "Adolescence", sees Noboru trying to navigate his first relationship much to the interest of the female family members in the house. It ends with the lovely Basho haiku The scent of plums / On a mountain path / Suddenly dawn. "Art Is Brief, Life is Long", on the other hand, is a very solemn piece for the film, as Shige contemplates how long she has left, stating that the recently bloomed cherry-blossom trees might be that last that she gets to see. She visits a sick friend in hospital and at first seems very lively and talkative until Shige asks why she is in there and she just breaks down and cries. This is followed by the Basho haiku No sign of Death approach/In the cicadas voices and the vignette ends. I also love the one where Takashi encounters the local bike gang but I will discuss that later. 

While grounded in reality, to a degree, Yamadas makes use of fun metaphorical visuals to heighten the family life

I've heard some mixed reactions to the animation style but I'm actually very fond of it. I love collecting the Studio Ghibli art books and in particular I love the very early concept art Miyazkai and Takahata produce for their projects. These tend to be very sketchy and are painted using bold water paints. My Neighbour The Yamadas is this style basically brought to life in animation and I think it's very effective and quite versatile. The introduction to the film, where a family member reads a very rambling speech at Takashi and Matsuko's wedding, is metaphorically represented visually on screen, as the camera flies around moving from scene to scene. The sequence is brilliant. The metaphors throughout are fun and it also draws upon elements of Japanese art and culture - Matsuko and Takashi starting their married life together is represented as them starting a bobsled run; "navigating the sea of life" shows the couple on a stormy boat navigating the famous tsunami painting, The Great Wave off Kanagawa by Katsushika Hokusai; the birth of Nonoke is played out in a similar fashion to the discovery of Kaguya in the bamboo thicket from the famous Japanese myth, just as some examples. I would argue that a sequence this ambitious, with the camera flying around and morphing from scene to scene would not be possible in traditional animation without time-consuming labour. 

The best thing that can be said about the legacy of My Neighbour The Yamada's animation technique is that it led to the stunning art design of Takahata's follow up film The Tale of The Princess Kaguya. The amazing line work and gorgeous watercolour palette was used to much greater effect in that film so, in retrospective, a slightly unambitious experiment to see how the technology works makes sense. I think this is put to greatest use in the best short of the film "The Fight For Justice", which involves a local biker gang making loud noise in the neighbourhood with the constant revving of their engines. It mostly plays out as light and fluffy, like the rest of the film, but there is one very odd scene where, to increase the tension, the chibi-style figures are rendered in realistic proportions. This is where Takashi confronts the biker gang outside his home. It's very effective and ever so slightly tense as the newly heightened sense of reality in the animation makes us a little scared for Takashi. However, it's not long before Matsuko and Shige come swooping in to save the day and the animation returns to the cute chibi style, effectively defusing the situation. 

As I said in the introduction, the film is overlong and out stays its welcome. Which is a shame because what I like in the film, I really like. The characters are well defined, the animation, water colour scheme and line work have an enormous charm to them and the individual stories, for the most part, are engaging. If you want to be sucked in by a great story, Yamadas is definitely not that film; it kind of just floats along in its own little world. I didn't think it will ever be anyone's favourite Ghibli film but it's still a pleasant little experience. For the longest time this looked like it was it for Takahata, with no new film until 2016's The Tale of the Princess Kaguya which, as mentioned above, used the same technology but to much greater artistic gain. Still, if you're in the right mood, My Neighbour The Yamadas is a lovely film to spend time with. As the film ends and the characters begin to sing Que Sera Sera and they start to float up into the sky using umbrellas, you realise that actually you have formed a close connection with them. Their simple trials and tribulations become fairly engrossing. It's a film I don't think about often but when I revisit it I like it a little bit more each time.

Quick thoughts on the dub - I don't really have any. It's been about 10 years since I've watched the dub and I don't have any strong opinions on it. Like Grave of the Fireflies, I think this one is so culturally specific to Japan, I think watching it in English is a bit of a disservice. It's got some big names, such as former SNL star Molly Shannon as Matsuko, famed voice actor Tress MacNeille as Shige and David Ogden Steirs as the narrator but I basically don't remember anything about the performances .. I'm sure it's ok.

Next time, Miyazaki returns with his most successful films and the one that would win him the Oscar for Best Animated Film thus gaining him and Ghibli new found international fame - it is, of course, Spirited Away.

And so I must address the elephant in the room. Soon after I began to write this article, I learned that Isao Takahata had passed away. Honestly, this news hit me like a ton of bricks. I have an unending respect and love for Takahata's works and all he did for animation. I will probably post a longer piece at the end of this process, perhaps as part of the Kaguya retrospective, so I will keep it short here. He was a brilliant director, a fantastic artist and a versatile story-teller. Not every one of his projects worked but it was his endeavour to try something different with each of his films that I respected the most about him. A massive talent who will be hugely missed.

R.I.P. Isao Takahata

Artist. Story-teller. Genius. 

1935-2018