GKIDS Films
Miss Hokusai is a new Japanese animated movie based on the historical manga series of the same name. The manga tells the story of Katsushika O-Ei, the daughter of famed 19th century Japanese artist Hokusai, who painted in the ukiyo style. She was a painter in her own right, although not as much is known about her. The movie takes a series of stories from the manga and weaves them into a set of stories that show a sort of progression of O-Ei’s life over a few key moments.
I have never read the manga, which was originally released in the 80’s, nor was I already familiar with Hokusai or his work. The movie doesn’t really get into the historical importance or anything like that, instead focusing on characters, loosely based on real people.
The movie has a sort of lush, vibrant art style, evoking the classic Japanese ukiyo style. In 1814, O-Ei of about 23 years old, lived with her father in Edo (now called Tokyo). Hokusai is an eccentric artist seeking always to become better every day, while acting as a bit of a curmudgeon. Zenjiro is the young apprentice painter often living with them too. O-Ei draws beautiful pictures of classic “erotica” (not the same as modern versions), but her father is always critical even as he acknowledges her talent.
GKIDS Films
Over the course of the movie, we see a series of vignettes about several little adventures. Some of them are even supernatural, but rarely are they explained. The movie assumes a lot of familiarity with historical Japanese culture, while I only have a little familiarity with it. Primary arcs involve O-Ei’s younger blind sister O-Nao, who is ignored by their father, as O-Ei tries to connect them. There is also the slow build of O-Ei attempting to get closer to understanding art at a deeper level.
She has a few fleeting romantic scenes, walking through a movie of great beauty but a feeling of something too close and far away at the same time. I don’t understand some of the references, and the reality was both stylistic and fanciful that was fine but didn’t fully engage me. I will admit that the slow style isn’t really my thing, but I didn’t really feel the movie fully explored the characters as much as had them have a bunch of conversations and silent moments of deep thought.
The sound is excellent though, and there are hints of modern rock music I liked but were out of place because they seemed unnecessary and without thematic purpose. O-Ei had a decent characterization, but other characters were thinly shown or caricaturish. Maybe I was hoping for something more blatantly theatrical, but in a lot of ways, this has a real “indie” feel.
Apparently the manga had a similar series of disconnected scenes with an overall narrative thread forward, but although that’s fine for a short miniseries, for a movie it’s a bit odd. Overall I liked the movie, but I never really connected with anyone or any event. It is a film beautiful to look at and with a firm sense of movement and kinetics, but I think it’s just not for me.
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