In many Japanese myths, forest animals such as foxes and raccoons have the ability to shape shift and play tricks on people. It’s a staple of the Japanese folktale, which are full of spirits, gods and mischievous animals.Written and directed by Isao Takahata (Grave of the Fireflies), Pom Poko follows a large clan of tanuki, or raccoon dogs, living in a forest around Tama Hills in the early 1990s. This area was chosen as a site as a development project called “New Tama” and the forest becomes slowly but utterly demolished. The central characters are the fun loving and carefree tanuki, who decide that in order to save the forest and their homes; they have to drive out the humans. They try just about everything they can think of in order to stop the construction; they send out two of their members to find master shape shifters, they lead aggressive and violent attacks against the workers, but for the most part, they tend to just play tricks on the construction workers in order to scare them off. Throughout the entire story, the film maintains a relatively light hearted tone, which mirrors the look of the characters.
As with nearly all Studio Ghibli movies, the painted backgrounds are beautiful and detailed. The tanuki at first seem very realistic and closely resemble their live action counterparts, but this all changes early on during a tanuki civil war. As the two opposing charge towards each other, they quickly transform into bipedal anthropomorphic cartoon characters while the narration explains. Apparently, when humans aren’t looking, the tanuki walk on two legs and can speak. In their more cartoony mode, they employ a wide array of magic to give themselves clothes or shape shift into just about anything they want to. They also bare an uncanny resemblance to the Care Bears. Speaking of their magic, I need to point something out about the tanuki. Much of their magic employs the use of their testicles. I’m not kidding. It’s a bit surreal watching the cute little tanuki do things like stretch their balls out into various objects, but keep in mind, this is actually an integral aspect of the tanuki in Japanese folktales. Once you get used to the visual, it’s pretty funny to watch. One of the more interesting things about this film is the tone. I mentioned that it’s pretty lighthearted throughout, and this makes for some pretty amusing scenes. The tanuki are so silly looking that even scenes where they all lay around in a mass depression are still sort of funny. It’s because of this tone both within the film and the quirkiness of the characters that they manages to sneak in some more mature themes. Many of the tanuki and even some humans die in their campaign against the construction site, and do to the rapidly decreasing size of their homes, the tanuki are forced to try and prevent themselves from having children in order to avoid overpopulation and starvation.
Despite whimsical nature of the story and a lot of the silliness I’ve described, Pom Poko is a very touching film and it’s hard not to be charmed by it. A key theme in Pom Poko is that of environmental conservation, but it never feels overly preachy. In fact, because of the nature of the characters and their genuine desire to save their homes, their plight becomes a very sympathetic one. The ending in particular is bittersweet. Another aspect of the story is about how the tanuki adapt to the new world; a world in which their homes no longer exist. This aspect of the narrative adds a hint of sadness over every element in the film, but is always secondary to the lighthearted nature of the characters. Pom Poko is a terrific animated film with a modern comedic twist on Japanese folklore and a poignant message about the environment.
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