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Pom Poko
平成狸合戦ぽんぽこ
1994 · Film · 119 min
Directed by Isao Takahata
The Raccoons of the Tama Hills are being forced from their homes by the rapid development of houses and shopping malls. As it becomes harder to find food and shelter, they decide to band together and fight back. The Raccoons practice and perfect the ancient art of transformation until they are even able to appear as humans in hilarious circumstances.
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16 comments on Hacker News
"vanished"
Died. They died.
Like in "Pom Poko" the Studio Ghibli film, where they say this out loud: we're not gone, we die.
My favorites were probably "Grave of the Fireflies" (warning: it's heavy and devastating), "Pom Poko" (very funny), "From Up on Poppy Hill", "Arrietty" to name a few. The fantasy-centered films are good, but my personal taste tends to lean towards the slice-of-life/coming-of-age films so that's why those were some of my favorites.
The only truly "bad" movie of the bunch is their latest from 2020: "Earwig and the Witch". It's computer generated instead of hand-drawn but it looks like a computer generated film from the early '90s. Just ugly and uninspired. And the story was not good. It had promise but did absolutely nothing with it. Very disappointing film. Thankfully, it looks like their next release (summer 2023) will be back to the hand-drawn style.
I think if you watch Pom Poko[1] with the dub, you're watching a completely different movie.
> Prominent scrotums are an integral part of tanuki folklore, and they are shown and referred to throughout the film, and also used frequently in their shape-shifting. This remains unchanged in the DVD release, though the English dub (but not the subtitles) refers to them as "raccoon pouches".
[1]: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pom_Poko
While I am a big Miyazaki fan, there is another interesting Studio Ghibli anime that others here may enjoy: Pom Poko (1994)
It is was the first non-Miyazaki Ghibli film I was ever exposed to. Not as popular as their other works but notable in it's own right.
I've seen plenty of other Ghibli films and thought I knew what to expect from Pom Poko, but it was quite a surprise experience. Definitely wild. I need to watch it again!
And then there is Pom Poko, which is in no small part about the giant and magical testicles of Japanese raccoon dogs.
edit: I think I'm being downvoted because people assume it's a bad joke, but that's really in the movie. And it's a great Ghibli movie by Takahata, but it's on the weirder end of the Ghibli movies about nature.
Studio Ghibli films are popular recommendations, but one you'll probably not hear about is Pom Poko (1984). It's very different from other more well known works from Ghibli. Story is about talking raccoons employing all kinds of wacky tactics trying to save their forest.
My wife and I have been going through the films from the beginning. We're only up to '95 and they've all been great so far.
I think that (in the US at least) Isao Takahata's works are underappreciated. I only knew him for Grave of the Fireflies (which is the best movie that I will never watch again). For example, Pom Poko is a wonderfully bizarre film that I'd suggest anyone watch.
It invokes the phantasmagoric shapeshifting tanuki scrotal attack scenes of Isao Takahata's 1994 animated fantasy film, Pom Poko!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LH8U4Nt4G40 (@ 6:33)
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pom_Poko
>Prominent scrotums are an integral part of tanuki folklore, and they are shown and referred to throughout the film, and also used frequently in their shape-shifting. This remains unchanged in the DVD release, though the English dub (but not the subtitles) refers to them as "raccoon pouches". Also, in the English dub and subtitles, the animals are never referred to as "raccoon dogs", which is the more accurate English name for the tanuki, instead they are incorrectly referred to as just "raccoons".
https://www.tofugu.com/japan/tanuki/
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=icyOAc_pAvY
https://www.mariowiki.com/Tanooki_Suit
>The Tanooki Suit, or Tanooki Costume, is a fairly uncommon item found in Super Mario Bros. 3 and its subsequent remakes in Super Mario All-Stars and Super Mario Advance 4: Super Mario Bros. 3. It is based on tanukis, Japanese creatures who, according to mythology, can use leaves to shape-shift and cause chaos. The suit is an add-on to the Raccoon form that allows Mario or Luigi to temporarily turn into a statue and become immune to enemies and obstacles, in addition to flying and attacking enemies with tail swipes.
>According to Shigeru Miyamoto in the Super Mario Bros. 3 entry of the 25th Anniversary Super Mario History Booklet, he was aware that most players outside Japan would be overall confused with the Tanooki Suit and the transformation, but he left it in because he was too excited to remove it.
Grave of the Fireflies is a legitimate classic, but might not be recommended for your daughters due to high risk of emotional trauma. Pom Poko and Princess Kaguya are more family friendly, but Takahashi's films are generally less accessible than Miyazaki's.
I enjoy Ghiblis movies, and enjoyed Pom Poko, but I wouldn't put it in the same class as Spirited Away, maybe Porco Rosso (but I prefer Porco Rosso myself).
Pom Poko is a Ghibli movie, yes, but it was directed by Isao Takahata, not Miyazaki.
I can aunderstand why it's not been marketed as much; it's pretty long-winded and it deals with Japanese stories and folklore that are foreign to the general western audience.
It makes me deeply happy to see this here. Miyazaki's mind is truly unique (and by extension most Ghibli films too), nothing else quite compares (and as the author points out, certainly not Disney & co. despite being Ghibli's distributors in the West). I've introduced many people to Ghibli, a lot of whom would have never even considered watching an animated film (even less so a foreign one), and most came away truly touched.
Miyazaki is anti-war, but he's also extremely pro-ecology as is obvious in most of his films (Nausicaa is an obvious one, but perhaps more obvious would be Pom Poko or Totoro). Broadly speaking, he advocates balance in all its forms. A lot of his main protagonists are strong female characters, and not the "overly girly unicorn princess with magical powers" kind. Violence, like greed, is a disease as opposed to an end (in fact those two concepts are often expressed together in his films, e.g. Spirited Away).
But maybe the best accomplishment in most, if not all, of Miyazaki's work, is his ability to capture the interest and the imagination of the viewers without resorting to cheesy gimmicks, gratuitous violence or sexual innuendos, which seem to be the go-to for a lot of cinema (animation and otherwise, Western and Eastern).
Don't forget Isao Takahata another founder of Studio Ghibli and director of Grave of the Fireflies, Only Yesterday, Pom Poko and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya. Yet have to see The Tale of the Princess Kaguya which is discussed in the article but the drama Grave of the Fireflies is a masterpiece to me. The only truly beautiful film in my memory which I bitterly regret having watch. To me the best movie to give you the feels of World War II, even more than acclaimed titles like "The Pianist" or "Life is Beautiful". A must see.
IMHO Isao Takahata is the primary reason why an end to Studio Ghibli doesn't make sense despite Miyazaki bitter vision of the Studios. For those who know Miyazaki's temperament it's not a big deal. My interpretation is that he would have wanted the Studios to be as true, ambitious and fantastic as a Ghibli movie. Well by visiting/knowing the Studios, I bet most of us would be quite taken aback by the lovely people and the atmosphere reigning there.
I, too, have always wanted to beat away police officers with my testicles. [0]
[0] http://www.dailymotion.com/video/xlft8n_pom-poko-balls-against-police_animals
(not really NSFW unless you work for some ultra-conservative group of some sort. It's from an animated film.)
Must watch "Pom Poko (1994)", if you haven't already.