Children Who Chase Lost Voices

星を追う子ども Makoto Shinkai, 2011
ReelAnime 3/4
 

So we have reached the second half of Madman's ReelAnime 2012. While I did know the first two directors and their work, the remaining two are pretty much completely new to me. It seems Makoto Shinkai is a director who has been making works quite regularly, I have heard of his interestingly titled film 5 Centimetres Per Second, but apart from that, I really don't know anything about him, and haven't seen any of his work available on DVD etc. in Australia as yet.

The film is about a young girl named Asuna, who lives in a picturesque little town near the mountains. Her mother works long shifts at a hospital, so Asuna pretty much looks after herself, and doesn't really have any friends. To pass the time, she sits upon the mountains listening to her makeshift radio that is powered by a crystal shard her deceased father left her. One day when walking home from school, Asuna encounters a terrifying monster, and is saved by a mysterious young boy named Shun, who disappears just as suddenly as he arrives. Determined to find her friend, Asuna learns of and seeks out the legendary world called Agartha, which lies below our earth. Even just from writing this short synopsis, it has made me realise how clumsily the story unfolds. The aforementioned monster appears out of nowhere, Shun, who we assume will be an important role in the story is quickly killed off, and Asuna sets out on an adventure with someone she hardly knows. Her substitute teacher/Agartha expert named Morisaki, the only character who possesses any true (if cliched) motivation for finding Agartha. He plays the roles of substitute teacher, academic, mourning widower and also member of an evil corporate organisation Arch Angel, who intend to find a gateway into Agartha. Asuna blindly follows him through the mysterious underworld, and we never really know why. Is it to find her dead father? Does she still believe Shun, who she knew for less than twenty-four hours, is alive? Story possibilities are introduced then discarded quickly, and much remains unexplained. The evil Arch Angel threat is conveyed as a powerful, evil force, yet is very quickly forgotten about as soon as Asuna and Morisaki enter Agartha, sealing the baddies on the outside and allowing our story to resume its aimless meandering, in an equally horizon-less underworld.

The main problem here is in the characterisation. Asuna is a completely boring cardboard cut-out of a character. She has no heroic personality traits, her voice is annoyingly cute and harmless, and she embarks on an adventure seemingly for no reason other than she has nothing better to do. The obligatory anime young-love story between the two young leads is set up, but hardly even touched upon, continuing Shinkai's trend of throwing out story arcs as he pleases. Every single character is completely dwarfed by the epic ambition of Shinkai's film. It's obvious he has spent most of his time developing and planning the world of Agartha, which could be seen as the film's true main character. Yet even this feels underdone. The characters wander continuosly through a vast and beautifully rendered land filled with... not much. It felt very much to me like a video game, where you are forced to traverse a massive overworld in order to reach places of interest like towns or dungeons. The "dual world" concept, along with certain beasts whose weaknesses are water and light also adds strongly to these video game comparisons. In fact, I'm going to go ahead and say that this film would be much more successful as a video game. I wonder if Shinkai ever played the Super Nintendo game Terranigma, a high concept role playing game dealing with similar parallel world ideas... Children Who Chase Lost Voices is an adventure story, and while it is beautiful to look at, with it's grand visuals realised wonderfully on the big screen, it's never as exciting as it could be. Links to ancient civilizations and influence from fantasy/adventure films like Indiana Jones or Journey to the Centre of the Earth seem quite clear, but Shinkai attempts a difficult balancing act with a large number of philosophical concepts and themes, and as a result, drops some and neglects others while misplacing the sense of wonder and discovery intrinsic to successful adventure stories.

Visually, the film is probably the most vibrant I've seen at ReelAnime so far. The film has a glowing, shiny, look, which lends itself perfectly to the cosmic, alternate world designs, with an eternal twilight enveloping every scene. The attention to detail is incredible. But the fact that the visuals are the film's main success just makes me think of the work as as a meal that looks really delicious, but by the end of it, you're still hungry. Shinkai's designs of the gods/guardians who watch over Agartha are also very derivative. I feel as though I've seen them all before in Miyazaki films, which I find annoying mainly for the reason that I end up mentioning Miyazaki every time I try and talk about non-Miyazaki anime. But when you're blatantly ripping stuff off/taking cues from him, its unavoidable. One scene with a young banished warrior cutting his hair and leaving his village on horseback is lifted almost shot for shot from Princess Mononoke. And the Izuko, evil undead monsters that survive only in the shadows are like something straight out of the Zelda games.

For me the film never reaches its full potential. It is an underdone and uneven affair, with some of the most uninvolving characters I've seen in a while. It really is a film of surfaces, stunning surfaces, but surfaces nonetheless. Shinkai sets up an exciting concept, the underworld of Agartha and the intrusion of the "top-siders" and delivers an average adventure, one that it is constantly trying to catch up with the visuals, which remain miles ahead of any other element of the film. In the end we are left with characters who aren't engaging, and a film too under-developed to be wholly satisfying, and an awful end credits theme-song.