Name: A lovely period drama in the slice-of-life, vignette-driven style of Isao Takahata.
Item: Miss Hokusai
Rating: 80
Author: seanny

Waifra

A lovely period drama in the slice-of-life, vignette-driven style of Isao Takahata. · Waifora

High-end anime films tend to draw from Hayao Miyazaki's template: fantastical family drama or adventure in an idyllic countryside setting. Keiichi Hara's Sarusuberi: Miss Hokusai instead hues closer to Isao Takahata's episodic slice-of-life films, Only Yesterday and My Neighbor the Yamadas.

Sarusuberi follows the daughter and successor of a famous artist as she comes of age, searches for inspiration, refines her craft, grapples with sexuality, and mends a broken family. Without a strong dramatic arc, the film lives or dies on the strength of its setting, characters and individual vignettes.

The worlds of paint, folklore, dreams and history continually collide. An unfinished painting spawns demons. A storm dragon is transcribed in brush strokes. Hokusai himself even recites a ghost story that is as abstract as it is evocative. The film not only portrays Edo, but also its folkloric mindset, where painters are only a part of its economy of dreams.

The characters range from wooden to animated. "Miss Hokusai" herself is the former, holding powerful emotions deep within. We latch onto her every glance and turn of the head, desperate for access into her thoughts. Fortunately, the characterization delivers with great detail and finesse. Even the puppy dog that grows with the family is one of the most charismatic I've seen in an animated film.

It's hard to evaluate slice-of-life due to its nature, but I would say Keiichi Hara's Sarusuberi fares far better than Sunao Katabuchi's Mai Mai Shinko (2009). The late Isao Takahata, the father of slice-of-life anime, may be retired but his art lives on.

Spoiler, click to view

-- End of review. But AniList has a character minimum so here are some additional, scattered thoughts. This I.G film, like any top-tier anime production these days, ropes in the god of cinematic realism, animator Toshiyuki Inoue, for some very lovely scenes. The heydays of cinematic realism (late 80s to early 2000s) may be over, but fortunately the industry can put together something like Miss Hokusai once in a while.

The worst aspect of the movie is probably the hammy J-pop-rock that bookends the story. It's a nitpick, but it's such an out-of-place, out-of-time mood-destroyer, I still sharply remember it years later. When you watch the movie, you'll know.