Those who have seen 1988 cult favourite Grave of the Fireflies will expect startling realism from Isao Takahata’s latest anime epic. In that film, starving urchins chat about diarrhoea. Here, in a story loosely based on one of Japan’s most famous folk stories, a milk-hungry baby stretches towards a big nipple and, a few years later, a party is held to celebrate the heroine’s first period.
As you’d expect from the co-founder of Studio Ghibli, Takahata has created a ravishing, technically perfect product and the hand-drawn, watercolour images explode with tender, humorous details.
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A lunar princess magically appears to a middle-aged peasant couple and falls in love with messy nature. The tragedy is that her coming prompts an equal and opposite reaction in her adoptive father. He moves the family to the capital, in the hope of making her existence more fragrant, while a wonderful dream sequence involves her shooting out of the city.
The film is ever so slightly too long. There’s too much toing and froing between mansions and mountains and, when the moon finally floats into view, you wish the time had been spent there instead. But that’s a quibble. Takahata is 79 and says it's unlikely he will ever make another film. The gentle daring of this offering makes it all the harder to say goodbye.
