The Boy and the Beast

I'm not sure how many theaters The Boy and the Beast got into this week, but it's got to be the biggest proper release for a Japanese animated film since The Wind Rises, and the biggest for a non-Ghibli one since... Man, I can't remember the last time something like it played screens like Boston Common for an actual one-solid-week, shows-all-day booking.

And the audience was pretty good, too! Room #17 at the Common is pretty good-sized, and while I sat down front because anime audiences can be awful - in the past, I've found that they seem so used to watching pirated copies on their laptop that you got a lot more phones and talking than anywhere else - it was already pretty well-populated when I got there with many coming in during the previews and first twenty minutes of the movie. It was a good crowd, too, making me wonder if Mamoru Hosada is kind of becoming the consensus choice of the folks who loved Ghibli and Satoshi Kon.

I hope it does really well, not just because it's very good, but because Japanese pop cinema is some of the most fun in the world - every year several of my favorite things at Fantasia come from Japan, a dizzying array of adventure, action, animation, surrealism, bizarre comedy, and independent-minded drama - but the Japanese movie industry seems to persist in staying insular, making it very expensive for foreign distributors to license things while at the same time making their Region A Blu-rays too expensive to import even if they had English subtitles. As China and Korea have stepped up quick worldwide releases, Japan sometimes seems thoroughly mired in the twentieth century in terms of sharing its cinema with the world. In some ways, it's a victim of Japanese culture's own popularity - where China, Korea, and India are often marketing to expatriates in America and making speed a virtue, Japan is mostly marketing to non-Japanese-Americans here and has found the traditional foreign-film model effective.

It might be changing, though. We didn't exactly get The Boy and the Beast fast, but we got it big enough in part because theaters seem to feel Asian cinema can do okay with good targeted marketing, and the Attack on Titan movies crossed the Pacific fairly quickly, even if they mostly got limited showtimes. Maybe it won't be too much to hope for to get the new Makoto Shinkai or Terra Formars later this year!

Bakemono no ko (aka the Boy and the Beast)

* * * * (out of four)
Seen 4 March 2016 in AMC Boston Common #17 (first-run, DCP)

I've been wrong about these things on a fairly regular basis, so I'm not going to question the American release of Mamoru Hosada's The Boy and the Beast on the same day that the Walt Disney Company puts out their own animated movie set in a city of animal people; maybe it will pick up some overflow from sold-out shows and introduce some new families to Japanese animation and one of its most exciting current filmmakers. If so, they're in for a treat; it's a terrific movie, mature but suitable for all but the youngest kids, smart and entertaining.

We're given a little background on Jutengai, a bustling city in a world of intelligent beasts connected to ours. Its Lord aims to reincarnate as a god in the next few years, and his successor will be chosen by a battle between warthog Iozen (voice of Kazuhiro Yamaji) and ursine Kumatetsu (voice of Koji Yakusho) - the former much-respected while the latter is strong but unrefined and disagreeable. Meanwhile, nine-year-old Ren (voice of Aoi Miyazaki) flees from his relatives after his mother dies, following a visiting Kumatetsu down a mysterious alley in Shibuya and to Juntengai. He becomes Kumatetsu's pupil under the name "Kyuta", although theirs is hardly a traditional teacher/student relationship. The other beasts are worried, though, as the blackness in human hearts is a well-known danger.

There's a visual reference to Moby Dick early on, and the book becomes an important touchstone later in the film, with Kaede (voice of Suzu Hirose), a bookish girl Ren meets when he is able to return to the human world, outright spelling out that it is less a battle between a man and a whale than one with himself. It's clear from the start that this is a battle that both Kumatetsu and his apprentice are fighting and one where the other can serve as an important ally. The film never suffers for wearing its heart on its sleeve like this, though; by the time Kaede says this, we've already seen how bestial Ren appeared at first and has sent Kumatetsu and Kyuta on a pilgrimage to learn what strength is.

For all that Hosada isn't ashamed to put what he's doing front and center, he's also surprisingly inventive, especially since one might expect him to stumble writing his first screenplay without usual co-writer Satoko Okudera. He deploys the image of Ren's dead mother with great care, for instance, letting the the audience feel what the loss means to him despite never actually seeing her as anything else. He goes interesting places when Ren rediscovers the human world, proving surprisingly gentle in demonstrating the pull it exerts on Ren. He telegraphs what the ultimate conflict of the story will be, but the details intrigue, and the action-filled last act, when many films would be pushing characters to emotional extremes, has a great deal of introspection and emotional connection, though not with the sort of detached philosophizing that derails many an anime.

It's a sight to see, as well. The opening sequence has Hosada having a little fun with some of the most obviously digital bits of the film, though he mostly keeps with the traditional hand-drawn look. There's a disarming simplicity to many of the designs and shots where detail is not needed, but the characters who need to be the most expressive are, and brilliantly so: Kumatetsu seldom gets twisted or distorted, but still communicates his personality most vividly through body language, while Kyuta starts out all gangly arms and messy hair but seems to stabilize as he grows, even filling out in such a way that the audience likely won't catch how smoothly an animated character can grow. One of Hosada's underrated talents is that, despite his characters often having quite simple designs, they remain easily recognizable as they age, grow, don different clothes and change hairstyles.

It's not just subtle stuff, though - though the Lord is a wise old rabbit, there's a bit of Bugs Bunny in him as he jumps from one place to another as soon as you take your eyes off him. The big action sequence in the end is impressively grand in scale without changing style too much from the rest of the movie (though Hosada does use different looks at times, especially when using surveillance cameras in the human world). There are some impressive bits of design work, such as the form that the darkness the beasts fear takes, but what's most delightful is how light on their feet characters feel during the martial-arts sequences; the natural movement seems so perfect that I'd suspect rotoscoping, except that seldom looks so smooth.

The film was presented in subtitled Japanese at my local theater, although I gather that it is playing with an English-language soundtrack at some venues; I strongly suspect that the original Japanese is preferable. Even leaving the soundtrack out of it, The Boy and the Beast is a fantastically-crafted movie, not ostentatious and with some edges left appropriately rough, but quietly near-perfect in nearly every way.

Formerly at EFC