Recommended
Modern Japanese films have a habit of dallying in mismatched melds of fantasy and slice of life, and finding the right balance and purposiveness to make this work is tricky. To begin with, the main character, Yuuta wanders through the woods and does a good deed for an old man who seems to be a spirit of some sort. On Yuuta's way home, he finds the road is blocked by a fierce stream, and just like any of those punishing old video games—Another World, for example—he does something stupid by choosing to wade through the waters and dies. Since he gave the spirit a waterbottle, the spirit decides to save him (even this sounds ridiculous, doesn't it?), but in order to do so, Yuuta must be placed in an alternate world "out of time" for about a month.
See, already upon hearing this, I'd be kind of hesitant to watch the film. While being whisked away to a temporal fantasy world can seem kind of pointless, the experience is meant to shape or develop the character by novel means. But since we're being transported to the past, a rural village in 1970s Japan (there doesn't seem to be any specific reason why), one might be tempted to ask why the city slicker boy isn't dropped off in a rural village instead and do away with the fantasy insertion altogether. It would seem to be about the same. In a way, I sort of wonder, does the location, an arbitrarily selected time in the past, really matter one way or another? However, the way in which Yuuta and Seako's stories begin to overlap makes this work better and more warranted than numerous other films I've seen operating in the same territory.
The fantasy element is a necessary part because of the kind of eternal nostalgia the staff are attempting to evoke. In a compressed yet effective manner, we can see the once tight-knit villagers who all know each other, their children dutifully appearing at a shinto shrine to handcraft lanterns for the seasonal festival. For soon, the construction of a dam (the same one that led to the main character's death, I guess? HAHAHAH!) will end their village's how many ever centuries of existence.
The painted environments are well-framed, and it's packed with wonderfully directed scenes of childhood nostalgia and the shaving away of modernity in favor of a simpler time—and in many ways better times; briefly touching on the spring water at Saeko's house, we can see how cool and fresh the water is, unmolested by the pollutants and pesticides often making their way into all fresh water supplies nowadays. The dam hollows out vast swathes of land, and the most rural areas are slowly urbanized, and salarymen with anime pillows and hololive girlfriends become the norm, etc. It touches on all of that along with your typical popsicle-sucking SoL events and something something impermanence thematics. Hey, at least artists in Japan have respect for the rural people of their country, unlike the vile nastiness spewed from the absolute gutter scum in Hollywood who deserve nothing but two middle fingers up.
There's a recurrence of motifs involving the ephemeral nature of the fireflies, acting as a guiding light, and connections that cease, where one cannot do anything other than hope the former friend or acquaintance is doing well. There's no other recourse but to continue on, even if the person(s) or thing(s) in question have perished, however. The film weaves its themes together in an emotional way, but, still, I can't help but think there are aspects to the screenplay, most of them involving the fantasy framing device, which do not mesh harmoniously.
It's an unfortunate, nagging flaw, and I'm honestly not sure how the writer would go about correcting the issue. Perhaps the film explains too much when it should mystify the viewer: good boy does valorous deed for jolly old man spirit, thus saving his soul from impending doom. The old man explains everything in precise detail. We need less explication. Even many of the most straightforward of celebrated poems have a richness to them that defies 100% clarity because there's a degree of abstraction. Too much explication in the language used renders it as prose of the least poetic sort or a list of directions; too little and one risks falling into the trap of writing incomprehensible gibberish.
I'm reminded of another somewhat similar film with a mixture of SoL and fantasy called Misaki no Mayoiga. The film has a lot of the same problems, but is more flawed due to the staff's inability to decide whether the movie was primarily meant to be a fantasy or not. On the other hand, Rainbow Fireflies is using the fantasy elements to strengthen the SoL and character-focused core of the film. Anyway, in MnM, there is a tale told where a person happens upon a mysterious house or something wonderful deep in the woods, and riches, items of great utility or desirability, or enlightenment (milk snort) can be found in these areas. The locations are revealed to certain people for unclear reasons, and they abound in folklore. These locations resemble organisms in the way they reveal and conceal themselves selectively. If they don't want to be found, then you will not find them. The main characters getting lost in the woods and stumbling upon a location of this sort may have its own problems, but not only is the notion rooted in tradition, but there is palpable mystery and a need to actively interpret rather than requiring a midgetized Mr. Miyagi to tell you everything with big and bold picture books for children—wax off, why don't you?
Another complaint is the music. As tends to be the case with commercial films, the OST is functional, and its style predates the sound of watered-down, flat-line minimalist banality you'd get with hacks like Hans Zimmer. Instead, we're treated to the old "sophisticated children's music" meant to imply something fantastic and whimsical and vaguely touch at the heart strings without being too cloying (and failing a bit), but everything about the tone of this film begs for a more contemplative and original score by composers like Ryuichi Sakamoto or Haruomi Hosono; the mood of the film is not too dissimilar from Night on the Galactic Railroad or the various Kenji Miyazawa short animation adaptations. Perhaps Rainbow Fireflies is more conventional than these productions, but it's operating in similar territory.
At least a few instances get closer to what I was hoping for, such as with the first flashback sequence, for the music does fit the scene well with its low-key nocturnal atmosphere, but I can't say the same for any other scene. One of my favorite moments is the lantern running sequence, but I've seen that scene so many times with the sound off, and I was shocked to hear such triumphal mediocrity blaring through my speakers. The sound effects are of a better quality, though the most familiar, repeated sound is—DING DING DING—you guessed it, the Japanese staple: the cicada. They sure love their summer sounds.
We, of course, get our crescendoes of strings and piano, which grace numerous pivotal scenes and the ending. When two friends part ways, the other kid runs after the truck until his feet give out, but a few brief moments later, the boy is again scaling roof tops and waving at the departing truck, the score swelling like a swollen heart about to pop, while the two kids wave until their arms must be on the verge of detachment. I mean, I don't think the intended effect was for me to laugh? But that I did. Likewise, I appreciated the character acting and voice acting of the two mains, and I was hoping all would go well for them, but the ending is hysterical day-glo wish-fulfillment, arrived at through the deus ex machina of the damnable Mr. Miyagi waxing on, and it feels like the most treacly parody of magic-induced reunions I've ever seen in a commercial film. Sweet, but it doesn't hit the right balance, and I expect a warning label: Product may cause diabetes.
Despite my mockery, even at its most overblown, I never fully rejected the film, and it handles a lot of the understated emotions in a more adroit fashion during many a scene. An immense amount of raw emotion is derived from not only the rough and loose character designs, but from the smooth character acting. Honestly, I find anime fans strange, and I don't mean that in the way your mom or normies would make the same statement. From what I've seen with independent animation, the primary thing being sought after is the animation, so it's an aesthetic pursuit. This is an obvious statement, but when it comes to anime, fans seem much more concerned with writing and story. Animation may as well be an afterthought. Shallow window dressing and nothing more. Consistency is crowned king, and deviation from the norm is often frowned upon.
The art direction here is consistent, but the character designs and animation are anything but. I've always found that when you can see the personality of the animator shining through in its purest and most idiosyncratic form, anime is at its best. The characters have a distinct look. Rather simple texturally and loose in their movements, creating free-flowing character acting. There's a frequent crackling energy to the animation in a plethora of scenes where even the seemingly mundane is given a heightened emotion, which is exceedingly rare in most anime I see nowadays, even amongst the lavishly produced ones.
While the animation is great throughout, certain scenes standout, such as the dreamlike running sequence intersecting with the characters' memories, or the fateful night with the motor bike—these scenes are directed and animated in an expressionistic manner like no other by Shinya Ohira, and the motorbike sequence was so mesmerizing that I thought I'd cry—except I didn't because I'm not a little girl, but I want to highlight how powerful these scenes are. There's a sketchiness and hyper-emotionality where the characters waver, seemingly being pulled apart for every step closer they venture toward one another that accentuates the fleeting nature of memories (it looks like Shinji Hashimoto's style). Ohira is given free reign to do whatever he wants it seems, and the character designs are often distorted and transmuted into whatever is necessary for the artist's vision, escaping the bounds of the conventional for a change. The momentary breaks with convention accentuate the distinctiveness of the scenes in a way only animation is capable of, capturing rare and unique beauty, and I wish I could savor that kind of artistry more often. But anime is a business. Oh well.
