The anime adaptation of Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window (映画『窓ぎわのトットちゃん』) opened today in Japan. As an avid fan of the book, I booked my ticket for the first screening at the nearby cinema and made my way there, with a lot of excitement and anticipation.
This post is going to be full of spoilers, so if you have not read the book yet, go read it now.
I caught the first screening at the nearby cinema, and for a weekday morning show, the cinema was quite full. And it was surprising to see that most of the people there were the elderly. It kind of made me feel young when the audience is mostly people in their 70s and 80s. 😅
The movie itself is more or less based on the book, flowing in chronological order spanning 1940 to early 1945. Kuroyanagi Tetsuko (Totto-chan) herself serves as the narrator, with the movie starting and ending with her voice. It starts with the familiar episode of Totto-chan being asked to switch school. Well, in effect, she was expelled because she was making it hard for the teacher to conduct lessons. Hydrangea was blooming so this was probably sometime around June 1940. Imagine being thrown out of school just after two months of starting Grade 1.
When Kobayashi-sensei said those words "You're a really good girl, you know" (君は、本当は、いい子なんだよ), tears welled up in my eyes. This phrase appeared a bit later in the book but I think the director brought it forward just for the impact. I mean, this phrase really changed Totto-chan's perception of herself, allowing her to become who she is today.
Being in chronological order, you have Totto-chan's days at Tomoe Gakuen before the war, with things slowly progressing toward the darker days of leaving in Tokyo during WW2. So you have a film that starts out lighthearted, charming you with the cheerful nature of Totto-chan. Then you start to see a bit of sadness, with the death of a pet. And the second half of the movie which deals with life in wartime Japan and the death of a friend. During the second half of the movie, I was crying so much it was embarrassing, until I realised that the old lady to my right and the young lady to my left were also crying. 😂
But it also has an inspiring ending, like the book, with Kobayashi-sensei saying "What kind of school shall we build next?" (今度は、どんな学校、作ろうか) as Tomoe Gakuen burns down during an air raid. While most of us would be shocked and depressed, he was already thinking about the future, about moving ahead. Even when things look bad around us, I think we need to be like Kobayashi-sensei, looking ahead instead of dwelling in the past.
As a 114-minute movie, there wasn't enough time to capture every episode in the book, so some of them were left out. However, I think the movie captured the message of the book, and was able to portray the events that took place in Totto-chan's life during those 5 years interspersed with some "Totto-chan" perspective scenes that tried to show how she saw those events. I can truly say that this movie is an amazing adaptation of the book into film. Like the book, this is a film that all humanity should watch.
Before the movie premiered, there was a special interview on Tetsuko's Room (徹子の部屋), where Tetsuko interviewed the director and voice actor of Totto-chan. Some of the things shared during this special interview:
- Planning for the movie started in 2016 and it took approximately 7 years for the movie to finally hit the big screen.
- A total of approximately 120,000 frames were drawn, all by hand, for this movie.
- The orchestra scene took about 2 years to complete.
- The film adopts a watercolour look because the book had watercolour illustrations by Iwasaki Chihiro.
Update 9 December 2023: There was a livestream today on Kuroyanagi Tetsuko's YouTube channel, she is in Hawaii right now. I asked if the movie will be shown overseas, and they said that of course, including several countries in Asia.
Update 21 December 2023: I watched the movie for the second time and wrote a comparison between the movie and the book here.
Official website (in Japanese)
No comments:
Post a Comment