The Concierge at Hokkyoku Department Store 北極百貨店のコンシェルジュさん

The Concierge at Hokkyoku Department Store (北極百貨店のコンシェルジュさん) opened almost three weeks ago in Japan, and I finally got a chance to watch it last night at a local cinema.

The movie has been running for almost three weeks now, and I found myself being the first person there for this particular screening. The cinema I was at only screens it once a day now, at one of its smaller screens.

Okay, in the end, this screening had an audience of 12, including me. This is quite disappointing, because this is actually a really nice movie, something that can be easily enjoyed with the family.

First, a quick introduction. This movie is about a new concierge working at a department store. She is under probation and tries her best to please the customers. In this story, the department store is staffed by humans, while the customers are all animals. The wealthy customers, the important ones for the department store, are termed "VIAs" for Very Important Animals. The owner of the department store, though, is an animal too, a great auk. The movie follows our new concierge as she goes about helping some of these VIAs.

In a way, this is like a slice-of-life anime, with a bit of funny, gaggy part to it through exaggerated visuals and a running gag of the concierge stepping on the owner of the department store and calling him a penguin. At the same time, there is the environmental message behind it all. Not obvious, but there if you want to look. For example, the VIAs are all extinct animals. They include laughing owls, sea minks, Japanese wolves, Barbary lions, a woolly mammoth, a Carribean monk seal, and a paradise parrot. And of course, the owner of the department store, a great auk. These species became extinct due to human greed. In this movie, the department store symbolises human greed, but turns it around to make human serve animals instead.

What I like is how this movie focuses on entertainment first, even though it has that environmental message. Often, we see Disney movies where the politically correct message ends up too prominent, drawing attention away from the story. Well, not this one. At 70 minutes, the focus was on an enjoyable story that uses visual and audio to captivate the audience. The environmental message in the setting is left for the audience to discover, if they so choose; all the movie does is to give a quick narration about each extinct species as a sort of introduction, since not everyone may know them. I mean, you can't find them in a zoo anymore. I feel that this non-intrusive way of delivering a message through entertainment is what makes Japanese anime in general more appealing to the masses than recent Disney ones.

 

Hopefully, more people can catch it while it is still showing in Japan. If not, I hope it makes its way into streaming, and performs better with a global audience.

Official website (in Japanese)