The narrative wherein she is an adult is draw in a fairly realistic and almost stiff style, but the narrative of her childhood is painted in a style resembling simple watercolors and the edges of the frame are washed out. The art of the film mainly arises in those segments wherein the art style is just oh so different than it is in the “current” portion of the film. As she goes throughout her summer various situations arise which remind her of her childhood growing up in the city. It isn’t that she has some sentimental view of that simpler way of life, it’s just that she enjoys seeing how it works and, despite the hard work, it’s a refreshing holiday for her. She helps pick the crops and keep the place running. Taeko, an office worker at her regular job, spends her summers working on a traditionally operated organic farm. Only Yesterday plays like a normal life drama about a young woman that is given the opportunity to choose between her life as a independent single woman and a life as a wife and possibly even mother.Īt the heart of the film is a contrast between the progressive Japanese culture and the traditional ways of the country. The characters seem real even when their situations do not.
Studio Ghibli, as a whole, as the ability to bring stories to life in a way that one forgets the films are animated. By all accounts the story feels an odd match for animation, as it seems the sort of narrative one would typically find in a live-action drama, yet Takahata tackles the subject matter as though it were perfectly suited for the animated medium and I have no complaints in this regard.
#Only yesterday 1991 english dub series
The story is progressed via a series of flashbacks as she talks to her sisters on the phone and they reminisce about their childhood in 1960s Japan. The story then shifts forward to her as a 27-year-old, unmarried woman, ready to embark on a summer vacation from her office job. The narrative of Only Yesterday begins in flashback with Taeko as a little girl in 5th grade. One might make the comparison that Takahata is to Miyazaki what Yasujiro Ozu was to Akira Kurosawa. Where Miyazaki’s films tend to venture more into the fantastic elements of storytelling, it seems that Takahata tends to take a more realistic approach to his stories. Only Yesterday was the second film he produced for Ghibli after his well-received film Grave of the Fireflies (1988) - which, as a side note, is the most depressing film I’ve ever seen. The reason I give this brief history is because, aside from the world of anime fans, Isao Takahata seems far less known and renown than his friend and collaborator Hayao Miyazaki. Studio Ghibli began as a collaboration between Hayao Miyazaki, Toshio Suzuki, Isao Takahata, and Yasuyoshi Tokuma, with Miyazaki and Takahata serving as the main creative directors of the films produced. Since the studio’s inception, Takahata has directed seven films. The world of Ghibli is a fascinating thing which is difficult to understand. Of course now, at the time of writing this post, I find myself in a world where Hayao Miyazaki has announced he is leaving retirement (again) to make another film, so who knows. I suspect its release coincided with the announcement that Studio Ghibli, the animation studio behind the film, and its main animator, Hayao Miyazaki, who served as producer (not director) on were closing up shop and going home. Only Yesterday was originally released in 1991 in Japan but did not receive an American theatrical release until earlier this year (2016).
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