Set at the climax of the Meiji restoration, Japan is in turmoil after a decade of fighting over the future of the rapidly changing country. Our protagonist, Jiro, lives in the far corner of Honshuu, in the small town of Sai on the Tsugaru Straits. Even here he cannot escape the turmoil of the times, and he returns home one day to find that his only (adopted) family members, his Mother and older Sister, have been assassinated by a mysterious shinobi. The village people, who had never trusted the adopted Ainu boy, blame Jiro for their deaths and he is forced to flee his home. This scene is a great start to the film, setting up the time period, the location and the main character very well within just a few minutes. The directing is very much from the perspective of Jiro, with the anonymous ninja's appearance being half from imagination. The sound design is intense, with the animation being synced up to the beats of the songs, something that is rare in Japanese animation outside of OPs due to the usual disconnect between the audio and animation departments.
The story then follows Jiro on a journey around the world, fleeing from a malicious Buddhist sect and learning the secrets of his dead father. He learns of a great treasure across the sea and sails first to Kamchatka and then to America. It is there that he meets a helpful American writer in a bizarre scene: Mark Twain. It does feel as though the scriptwriter just decided to have a famous contemporary American appear, since Mr Twain doesn't seem to have much of his elegance and seems to be some sort of traveling expositioner as his famous encyclopaedic knowledge of geography comes in handy and he sends Jiro to the location of the treasure
Set in a very definite period of history, the film seems to depict the time with some sort of authority, or at least that of which takes place in Japan. Multiple accurate historical events are described and portrayed, sometimes with transitional frames giving you some historical backdrop. I don't know if these were meant to be educational or are just there to keep the viewer from confusion. The rarely acknowledged (in the West at least) Ainu people are also a focal point of the narrative, with Jiro being one and often being singled out for that fact. The Ainu at the time still lived lives quite separate from the mainstay Yamato culture, and large amounts of them still lived in Yezo and Chishima (now Hokkaidou and the Kuril islands). During the final stages of the Meiji restoration, the fighting would stretch out to the edges of the Japanese realms and the Ainu would suffer much real and cultural loss in the decades of power consolidation that followed. Traditional dress, food and living are all portrayed within in the film, and taking the perspective from within the ethnicity paints a sympathetic picture for the old group.
The film does suffer from its eclecticism however, the writers' obvious lack of knowledge of the contemporary West shows, and the antagonist is so archetypically evil that he is rather uninteresting in himself, and some of his powers and strategies seem ridiculous and underdeveloped. Sometimes there are potentially interesting themes that are introduced, such as American slavery, but not ever addressed in any intelligent way. While I do think the story from afar is a solid one that stands up well entertainment wise, the theming seems to be too clustered and unsure of itself to be good, while also making everything far more confusing, a common complaint from viewers.
This wasn't the film that I had originally planned to write about next, but I never got around to rewatching Gundam F91 and trying to talk about it from memory proved unfeasible. So from now on I won't be announcing the next installment, you'll just have to wait and see. Bye for now
Originally posted on the 10th of August 2019
