We just watched Pom Poko, a Miyazaki anime film about tanuki fighting to save their woodland home from development into a Tokyo bedroom community.
How do the tanuki fight? They use their magical shapeshifting powers and their mad testicular skills. At any sign of progress, they party down and they are easily distracted by thoughts of food. "Let's kill all the humans!" "Okay! But then where will we get tempura?"
The movie is fun and very Japanese, with the combination of low humor, mythological references, and a rather complex ending. We'd love to party with the tanuki. I think we can dance as well as badgers do.
For the first time I was distracted by the voice acting in a Japanese anime. This used to only happen with American animated movies, but now I've watched enough cheesy Japanese TV dramas that I can recognize the voices of the character actors in particular. So I'm looking at one tanuki and thinking, "That's the cow guy from Chura-san." (Ha! I just crosschecked the cast listings for Pom Poko and Churasan, and I was right.)
186 words | August 29, 2006 10:55 PM | Lost in translation