At The Movies
A Letter To Momo
Moving to a small island name Shio with her mother who grew
up there as a child, Momo is filled with a silent regret and disconnection with
the new place she is forced to call home. Her thoughts remain with the memory
of her father and unfortunately, it is her last words toward him in an argument
she would remember most before he died, all that was left of their conversation
that day was a letter she found left unfinished, only with the words Dear Momo.
It’s only her guess in what her father would have said and with her mother more
distant than ever before, stuck somewhere she doesn’t want to be, it seems that
indeed she will never know what her father wanted to say to her and in turn
what she wished she could have said to him. Except something else is happening,
it starts when she sees her mother off, a shadowy figure that seemed to beside her as she had waved to her. How terrible is what she’s seeing and how is
it connected to the thefts happening in the orchards. Its then that voices follow
until she sees three yokai, who are as surprised as she is that they can be
seen, the answer to everything strange that’s been happening since she’s arrived,
except it isn’t going to end there.
Momo now fears for
her life with these three yokai and though they seem to steal, eat, and well
behave as demons, they appear for some reason to be harmless, though they never
apologize for what they are which I like yet that doesn’t fool Momo , of how
dangerous and threatning she believes to be at first. Who knows maybe her
distrust in anything they say is also stemmed from her father’s death, if not
that’s just one careful girl but to be fair it is a normal reaction to seeing
something like that. The film tends to favor that approach more than anything
else, despite all it’s wonder and some of the aspects of the show seem to be
favored through fantasy, this is a human story, a story of amends and one that
is indeed very relatable to anyone that wished they could have said something
to those they’ve lost. It’s also shows that grief isn’t anything that leaves in
the blink of an eye, it stays with us, it changes us and what becomes of us is
a question the movie asks.
As she spends half the film running from the
yokai and finally threatening them until the truth becomes clear that these
three, a large one with a beard and a large gaping wide smile and the closest to
appearing human, a middle sized jelly belly jaded looking demon with a toga to
match his bad attitude and a cute little demon that seems very emotional and
very endearing even if it horrifies Momo at first. It might look like a skinny
burn victim but it’s one of the cutest demons I’ve ever seen. Here is where the
humor lies in the movie between her and these three yokai, who might become the
hopeful connection between Momo and her departed father. Except they spend more time causing trouble
than anything else, we’ve mentioned the food stealing and it isn’t like Momo
has anyone else she really can count on. Not to say they aren’t there but there
is the sense that she doesn’t count on them, or anyone really except maybe her
mother but the movie shows there is a gap ever widening between them and the appearance
of the three yokai don’t help things. There are the the other kids and her
grandfather if only she overcome the clear hesitation in trusting anyone or
getting close with them. The problem isn’t something that she hides as it instigates
and brings to a head an argument with Momo and her mother, who seems busy all
the time doing the things she has to do to take care of the both of them even
though it helps to hide her own grief for her husband. Something we are shown a
part of but Momo can’t see this, it might be something hard to even comprehend
through her guilt, how much of her father’s passing still affects her mother
even to the moment of their argument. Can
Momo find a way to trust in herself and have her words reach her father somehow,
as well as find the courage that’ll be needed to protect those closest to her, something
she will have to redefine along the way? This might include her mother someone
she may have to be there for as much as she hopes will be for her.
Addressing
her hesitation we can’t overlook the influence that the other characters have
on her, her grandpa might not necessarily think she’s nuts for explaining about
the yokai, in fact through his father he knows the story of them, how they’re
like, giving her a little insight to the three she’s stuck with. Which is a comfort,
in fact both grandparents have a relaxed attitude and even if she can’t really
talk to them about what’s going on with her, it’s nice to see that they are so
friendly with her, it would be much harder if she was stuck in the evil family in
a new place routine. Then there are her friends, her mother even tried to get her
to be friends with those that would reach out to Momo, including a young boy
with a little sister. That’s where hesitation in her life and the regret from
her father seem to show their greatest in the film, the inability to have
friends shows how it affects her daily life and will prevent her from accepting
the island as her new home. Of course with the little boy Youta there are brief
interludes, where he shows her his grandfather’s straw boats and various other
things, it’s a good example how it would be if she could let people in. The strongest
symbol of her hesitation is the scene where she’s invited to go swimming with
Youta and the rest of the group of kids who quickly accept her because Youta is
more or less their leader and told them so.
There lies another issue, she isn’t faced with a group that need time to
get use to her, they accept her right away and I think that Hiroyuki Okiura did
a great job by showing us that all her answers to adjusting to her new life are
actually there, she just has to accept it. Where they turn out to go swimming
is a bridge that they have to jump off of and when it’s her turn she can’t,
with all of them staring and waiting for her, she ends up leaving and it shows
her greatest problem is herself. Not that I blame her, there were an awful lot
of rocks down there and they were diving right next to them!
Though I think it
shows how isolated and alone Momo is at that point and it definitely connects
well to the rest of the movie, the problems that have been like storm clouds
come to a head and it leads to a whole slew of emotional scenes which
ironically do include a storm. Which is almost a metaphor of what she must
overcome to come to a conclusion for her grief, get an answer from her father
and protect the aspects of her life that are important to her. As well as
emotional these scenes are visually stunning, quickly transforming the deep
breathes and long shots of the quiet life on the island to the urgency and the
magic that will come out of it, the yokai in the midst of a storm is all I’m going
to say but the scenes in it show two different animation styles, the realistic
emotions on the faces of the characters and the style of the demons imaginative
and colorful colliding to really leave you in awe.
It was the first time we saw Hiroyuki Okiura in the director’s
chair in over a decade, in fact it’s been since the terrific Jin Roh: The Wolf
Brigade. What has he been doing since that time, why working on this film for
the most part and it shows, he’s spent the last seven years working on the film
in both the script and the storyboard work and of course was director. Although
Letter to Momo might be lighter in tone compared to Jin Roh, it has in common
with its predecessor the fact that it packs a powerful punch emotionally and
helps to prove why Okiura is one of Japan’s best storytellers. There are scenes
that will remain with you from the scene at the end with her and her mother on
the beach and a boat they sent out into the ocean to her father, to her telling
the yokai how she will never forget them and the response she’s given by the
least likely of the three, the jellybelly toga wearing demon. From the quiet
scenes, to the scenes where characters are throwing their pent up emotions at
each other, to the honest humor and misdeeds of yokai, A Letter to Momo is a must
for anyone no matter their comfort zone when it comes to anime.
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