I'm afraid I'm going to have to end the four-star streak for this movie. I just saw it tonight and it was very, very odd... to the point that the oddness was too distracting... I didn't feel for the characters and the whole thing felt too long...

Now I'll admit the subtitled version I watched wasn't particularly well down... the titling went too fast and it always seemed to lag behind the dialogue. This made the action very difficult to follow and I was half way through the movie before I began identifying the various main characters.

And, chalk this one up to being squeamish about 'raccoon pouches' but... *shudder*... seeing a tanuki use his inflated magical 'pouch' to bounce around and squash soldiers... the weirdness factor just pushes my sense of disbelief a little too far.

Maybe I'll re-review after seeing the dub, but for now this one wouldn't make my recommended viewing list...

Amazing movie! This film is beautifully animated in all its forms--it switches back and forth from realistic to cartoony to very cartoony. All the scenes are gorgeous and evocative, and some are quite mond-boggling. there is a scene of blowing soap bubbles, where the iridescence of the soap is captured with a few simple colors. You can;t help but love the raccoons, with their party-hearty attitude and mischeivous natures. Though the movie is long, it keeps you on the edge of your seat watching the raccoons' small victories and wondering if their next plan will be the one that pulls off the miracle and stops the developers from destroying the forest.

I know that Lupercal watches the subbed version, so I'll just mention that if there was any reference in the English dub to...ahem...THOSE, I didn't catch it. When the first reference was made to transforming one's "raccoon pouch" I was a little baffled, since raccoons have no pouches...and it would be the females who had 'em if they did. My question of "They can't mean THAT, surely?" wasn't answered till the scene where it was made abundantly clear that it DID mean that. I will definitely have to watch the subbed version to see if anything else was cleaned up.

In any case, this is a movie not only worth watching, but worth owning. Unless you;re really, really squeamish about...raccoon pouches.

I had first heard about this movie from a fan-made Anime Music Video that used clips from this film in it. Then I heard it was being released in the US. I couldn't wait to watch it, and it was worth buying.

It's a joy of a film: the story of a magical species that does everything in its power to save its home from the ever-growing development of man. It's funny, serious, and especially quirky at times, but you're able to understand what goes on and what the tanuki go through during such a time of change.

And of course, the *cough*magical testicles*cough* that the male tanuki use throughout the film. It's not bad, but at least it's helpful for telling the male and female tanuki apart.

I have only watched the English dub of the film, and it is well done. The voices do an awesome job of capturing the changing emotions of the characters. The music and sounds are beautiful, as they paint a symphony of a story through music.

Overall, this is a wonderful film that will make you laugh, make you cry, and definitely make you think in the end. Everyone should watch it!

Really liked it a lot. I only saw he English dub but it was decent. The animation is the best you'd get from Ghibli, the story is...bizarre...yet in a good way.

'I HAVE NO FACE!!"

lol, just had to do that...

James

This is how 'FernGully' might have turned out if it'd been made by Akira Kurosawa when he was completely off his face. Released in 1994, just after 'FernGully', 'The Animals of Farthing Wood' and 'Once Upon a Forest', this is Ghibli's take on the animals threatened by land development theme - but any resemblance to the aforementioned cartoons is pretty tenuous. Would any of those pictures treat you, for instance, to a scene where construction workers are attacked by flying raccoons who try to crush them with their gigantically enlarged testicles, to the sound of bagpipe music?

'Pom Poko' was directed by Takahata, whose first film for Ghibli was 'Grave of the Fireflies'. I must admit that it was hard for me to imagine the maker of Ghibli's most serious and powerful movie turning his hand to a tale about talking animals who sing about their "balls of steel, swinging in the wind" (yes, they actually sing about their testicles at least twice, which is probably going to give Disney headaches), but there is actually a similarity between the films. Both have a sort of doomed, helpless feel to them - though this is less conspicuous in 'Pom Poko', and frequently undercut by comedy. It also bears marked similarities to Miyazaki's 'Princess Mononoke', particularly at the end. It's a great film - God, I'll fall off my chair the day Ghibli make an average film - even if Ghibli have made one or two even better.

The basic plot of 'Pom Poko' is simple. It's the nuances, ironies, and references to Japanese folklore which make it more complex and fascinating.

At its most basic level, the movie is about the massive urban development which took place on the outskirts of Tokyo in the 1960's, and how the mountain forest home of the Tanuki is slowly destroyed to make way for houses (the tanuki are called 'Raccoons' throughout the movie, though the English translation is usually 'raccoon dog'. They do look like raccoons, but they're actually canines.) In Japanese folklore, the tanuki, along with foxes, are thought to be shapeshifters, and indeed it is this magical ability which the tanuki use to try to combat the human encroachment on their home.

Initially they sabotage some machinery - some humans are actually killed - but they eventually decide to revive the ancient art of metamorphosis, which has largely fallen into disuse, and messengers are sent to other parts of the country to retrieve the ancient masters of the art. Meanwhile the raccoons who know the art at all teach it to the others, and before long the Tanuki are able to transform into everything from humans to... well, anything. By the end they can even transform the landscape and warp time, or at least give the illusion of doing so.

Most of their strategy involves trying to freak the humans in the area out by staging a huge 'spook war' during which they take over the town, filling it with bizarre apparitions which have to be seen to be believed. What is really unbelievable though is that most of the townspeople actually think it's a clever form of entertainment of some kind. I won't give any more away about how the battle goes after that.

The racoons themselves are drawn in a wide variety of styles. Some of the time they are drawn completely realistically, at which times they really do look like north American raccoons. These sequences are absolutely superb, and made me wish Takahata had made a whole movie with them in that form (not that there's anything wrong with the other forms. I just thought the naturalistic one was beautifully done). As soon as there are no humans around however, the tanuki become instantly anthropomorphic, walk on two legs, and wear clothes (usually just an unbuttoned shirt and headband). At other times they morph into a stylised, very cartoony form, usually when they are excited or happy. In fact, rather endearingly, they don't seem to really have full control of their morphing abilities, and are apt to change appearance out of sheer exhuberance.

The tanuki are quite wonderfully characterised, and they have a very raccoonish personality, are easily distracted and are rather hedonistic. For instance a plan to kill all the humans is re-considered when they realise they won't be able to scrounge any hamburgers from them anymore. Ultimately this raccoonish mindset doesn't equip them to be terribly brilliant warriors, and you wonder if they really have any chance against the humans at all - unlike the more self-controlled foxes, who arrived at a solution some time back.

The film is brimming with references to Japanese mythology, children's songs and folklore. Some of it is clear, some of it is obscure and fascinating, but unlike 'Spirited Away',or 'My Neighbour Tototoro' where some of the creatures were simply made up by Miyazaki, you sense that everything in 'Pom Poko' does relate to something 'real' in Japanese myth.

It's an ambitious movie, not least because it seeks to balance the raccoons' tragic plight with their frequently comic personalities. On top of that it sets itself the same task of resolving the 'civilisation vs nature' dillemma which was tackled in 'Princess Mononoke'. In my opinion neither film really manages to make you feel comfortable that such a resolution was reached, and I almost wish that the ending of both films had come down a bit more emphatically one way or the other. And here I'm verging on saying more than I should again.

This is different from any other Ghibli movie I've seen. In fact it's pretty unusual to find a fully anthropomorphic Japanese animated feature. There are moments of real sadness, poignancy, and joyfullness. I can't help feeling these moments could have been developed a bit more fully though. On first viewing I can't quite put 'Pom Poko' in the same class as the director's masterpiece 'Grave of the Fireflies', but falling short of that film is barely a criticism, and I'm still giving this four stars, because I'd give 'Firfelies' five if I could. It's still a wonderful movie that you have to see somehow, and if any other studio had made it, it would probably be their best known film.

Definately a keeper, which belongs in your collection. I'll be buying the English language version which is supposed to be coming out this year in Australia, if for no other reason than I frequently wanted to feast my eyes on the visuals without being distracted by subtitles - something that usually doesn't bother me.

There's nothing else quite like 'Pom Poko'. If there's something familiar about it, it's that it's yet another Ghibli classic.