Live-Action Japanimation

DSC09957totoro.JPG


DAY 347: Voltron.  Pokémon.  G-Force.  Yu-Gi-Oh.  Speed Racer. Unless you’ve been hiding in a cave for the past fifty years (without a TV), you must recognize at least one of these titles (each one representing a decade since the 1960s).  They are the titles of some of the more popular cartoons to be exported out of Japan and into the screens of American television, after being redubbed into English.

Cartoons, like video games, are another of Japan’s major exports.  Often referred to as “Japanimation” or “anime,” Japanese cartoons are usually characterized by elements like “speed lines” and wide-eyed characters.  Anime isn’t exclusive to the small screen; it is a world capable of being more fantastic than anything live-action film could create, and the genre has spawned many feature-length stories worthy enough to grace celluloid—including the more well-known anime films like Akira and Ghost in the Shell.  These two examples, like many anime films, aren’t for kids, with dramatic sci-fi storylines and gratuitous animated sex and violence.  In some movies, “violence” is an understatement with really explicit, almost jaw-dropping scenes of gore and blood.  One particular adult anime film even involves a race of demonic aliens with about a dozen penises each that come to earth to go around raping women.  (Anime fans reading this are smirking because they know just exactly which one I’m talking about.)

This is not to say that all feature-length anime films are ultra-violent.  Studio Ghibli, the studio that produces the animated works of world-renowned Japanese animator Hayao Miyazaki, exports many anime movies with compelling storylines good for the whole family.  Miyazaki, a “Japanese Disney” if you will, has created a world of many characters over the years, cherished not only by Japanese children and adults, but people around the world (with the global distribution help of the Disney corporation).  If you’ve seen Kiki’s Delivery Service, Princess Mononoke or Spirited Away, you’ve already seen fantastic worlds that Miyazaki has created.

Unlike Disney, Miyazaki hasn’t aspired to make an empire of theme parks, but instead has created just one museum inspired by the Studio Ghibli films, located in Mitaka, just outside of central Tokyo.  Opened in 2001, the museum is “the kind of museum [Miyazaki] wanted to make,” with the philosophies noted in the museum’s color pamphlet: 

”The building must be: put together as it were a film; not an overbearing, flamboyant, gaudy or suffocating building; something to make people want to touch things in it.  The museum must be run in such a way as to: treat small children as if they were grown-ups; not force visitors to follow a pre-determined, fixed course; provide exhibits that will stimulate a wealth of ideas, while avoiding worn out displays covered with dust.  The displays will be: not only for the benefit of people who are already fans of Studio Ghibli; not memorials to Studio Ghibli with only exhibits from its past films; things and spaces that will allow visitors to appreciate, just by looking, what it’s like to be an animator and to gain a new appreciation for animation… [The museum will not be:] a pretentious museum; an arrogant museum; a museum that treats its contents as if they were more important than people; a museum that displays uninteresting works as if they were significant.”

With that all said, it sounded like a museum-goer’s ultimate dream.  However, the pamphlet neglected one other philosophy:

The museum will not: allow photography or video recording.

JOHN (A.K.A. BLOGREADER SZLACHTA) HAD GOTTEN US advance tickets for the museum—required to insure crowd control—and met me at the entrance gate with his girlfriend Melissa.  “Hey there’s Totoro!” he said, pointing out the iconic Ghibli character (Ghibli’s Mickey Mouse if you will) at the fake “Totoro entrance” (picture above).  Seeing Totoro and the whimsical exterior of the museum, we knew we were at a place for the young and the young at heart.  Not only was Totoro there, but the giant robot soldier from Laputa:  The Castle in the Sky stood on the roof’s wooden garden. 

Despite the no photography rule, John and I managed to sneak in a few shots here and there as we wandered the fairy tale house adorned with Ghibli-inspired stained-glass windows.  There were exhibits of the process of animation, from concept art to scriptwriting to drawing, coloring and animating.  In a crowded room with a classic-looking animator’s drawing board, there was a hands-on camera where one could pan and zoom a scene with a hot air balloon floating over a city.

Only about 60% of the museum exhibited things from Studio Ghibli; a substantial portion was allotted for Pixar, the computer-animation studio under Disney’s distribution wing that brought us Toy Story, Monsters, Inc. and Finding Nemo.  They too exhibited fun examples on the process of animation, from storyboarding to animatics.  One room was even a promotional room for the upcoming The Invincibles movie.  What the exact partnership between Pixar and Studio Ghibli had together to spawn such an exhibit in Japan I wasn’t sure of; fans speculate Pixar will animate an upcoming Miyazaki film, but no details have been given (at the time of writing).  Perhaps secrets were a good thing to keep people wondering…

THE ENTIRE MUSEUM WAS CROWDED WITH PEOPLE in every section, not just the kids playing on the big plush Cat Bus inspired by the Cat Bus in My Neighbor Totoro.  It was so crowded that the three of us got separated somewhere between the bookstore, the gallery of Pixar posters and the gift shop selling everything from Totoro key chains to Innocence (the sequel to Ghost in the Shell) on DVD.  I eventually found Melissa and we tried to find John—which was easier said than done with the museum interior sometimes feeling like an M.C. Escher drawing.  It took a while to find him but we eventually did, and we all went to the in-house Saturn Theater to watch Hayao Miyazaki’s latest short film (at the time of writing), The Whale Hunt, about a class of schoolchildren with imaginations so powerful that takes them out to sea. 

WE LEFT THE IMAGINARY CHILD WORLD OF STUDIO GHIBLI and re-entered the real world on the way back to Tokyo.  Like within the spectrum of anime, John moved from children themes to adult ones.  “So do you get lonely on the road?” he asked me.

“Nah, there’s always someone around wherever I go.”

“No, you know what I mean,” he said with a smirk.  He was probably speaking for many male Blogreaders wondering the same thing.  (Funny how many guys come to this travel Blog for sex, when there are exactly 1.3 gojillion websites specifically for that already.)

I smirked back.  “I’ve had my moments.”

“Oh, so you do!” he said excitedly.  “Because you never write about that stuff.”

“There’s a line I draw between stuff that goes public and stuff that remains private,” I told him.  “That stuff stays outside the boundaries.”

“[Yeah, I figured it gets pretty lonely on the road,]” he said.  “That’s why I brought her along,” he joked, pointing at Melissa.

“OKAY, WHERE’S FUJI?” Nicaraguan doctor Melissa said like an stern E.R. surgeon as the elevator doors opened.  We had arrived at the 45th floor of the Tokyo Metropolitan Government building for the free look out the observation deck.  Typhoon 21 had swept away all the lingering rain clouds and pollution over Tokyo, leaving a clear sky to see the big expanse of Mega-Tokyo.  The sky was clear enough that we could see the famous Mt. Fuji to the west, which was closer than I thought it was—or perhaps just a lot bigger—flanking Tokyo in a glowing orange sky.  The orange turned to darkness and the sparkly lights of Tokyo came out.

With multiple voicemails to Liz (since I didn’t have a number for her to call me back), Liz directed us to the kaiten-zuchi (conveyor belt sushi) place we went to before, since I raved about it to John and Melissa.  The three of us sat at a table for beers, green tea and plenty of sushi—Melissa and I even had the moving shrimp sushi, with tail ends that jiggled outside our lips when we took our bites. 

At the end of my animated day with John and Melissa, we split up to go our own ways, all before the Tokyo subway system closed at the painfully early weekday closing time of ten o’clock.  In Tokyo, no matter if you were into the family-oriented anime of Studio Ghibli or the grown up kind with demonic sex-crazed aliens—or a little of both like John—the train lines always seemed to keep everyone in line like it was a school night.


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This blog entry about the events of Thursday, September 30, 2004 was originally posted on October 08, 2004 on the blog, "The Global Trip 2004: Sixteen Months Around The World (Or Until Money Runs Out, Whichever Comes First)," hosted by BootsnAll.com. It is one of over 500 entries that chronicled a trip around the world from October 2003 to March 2005, encompassing travel through thirty-seven countries in North America, South America, Africa, Europe, and Asia. It was this blog that "started it all," where Erik evolved and honed his style of travel blogging. (It starts to come into focus around the time he arrives in Africa.)

Praised and recommended by USA Today, RickSteves.com, and readers of BootsnAll and Lonely Planet's Thorn Tree, The Global Trip blog was selected by the editors of PC Magazine for the "Top 100 Sites You Didn't Know You Couldn't Live Without" (in the travel category) in 2005.





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