Ihatov Gensou: Kenji no Haru

How do you make a fitting tribute to a great person? Well, this is how. It's *exactly* how it needed to be in this case: poetic and extremely heartfelt. Spring and Chaos is a short parable on Kenji Miyazawa's life as an adult, directed by Shoji Kawamori of Macross and Escaflowne fame. Of course, one cannot expect a comprehensive life account in less than an hour's time—thankfully, the movie doesn't attempt that. Colorful and deliberately surreal, it instead relays the atmosphere of Miyazawa's works and the circumstances of their creation, the physical and emotional turmoil he was going through in his short life, and his uniqueand vivid vision of the world around him, doing so in short and poignant glimpses that tell us exactly as much as we need to know to understand his personality. Surrounded by misfortune, sadness, and misunderstanding, Miyazawa's soul shone through in his unrelenting dedication to comprehending the world and enriching the lives of others back when almost nobody—including most of his family members—could realize the extent of his talent, strength of character, and self-sacrifice. The movie quite fittingly gives us a good taste of Miyazawa's writing and worldview by presenting his life as a visual poem where characters are portrayed as cats—and does so by capturing the very essence of poetry in all of its splendor without focusing too much on the worldly details; in a sense, taking an approach almost exactly inverse of the over-represented slice-of-life genre. Call it an "essence of life": the genre where you say little to tell a lot. And yes, in its relatively short runtime it tells quite enough to emotionally overwhelm—just like good poetry should. Many of you know how it feels to rewatch something you first saw many years ago. More often than not you fail to recapture that first-time experience. But Spring and Chaos is one of those very rare pieces of art that doesn't only stand the test of time—it actually becomes better on a subsequent watch. I was just under 20 when I first saw it, and while it certainly did seem inspired and engaging at the time, I couldn't say I was moved very much. But now I'm 30, and it completely wrecks me. Perhaps, it's just that it's easier to empathize as you grow older, or maybe it's because I've grown to appreciate poetry more since my teenage years. I don't know, but it's hard to even write this simple review without choking up. So many scenes in Spring and Chaos are unbelievably powerful despite the narrative subtlety. This is especially prominent in the second half, considering the movie has very little actual dialogue and relies predominantly on visual storytelling. All in all a mark of an outstanding work that transcends its medium and succeeds at its ultimate task: to introduce the viewer to the marvelous world of Kenji Miyazawa. The lamp is lost, its light forever preserved. Sleep well, Kenji-san.