"Wakaokami wa Shogakusei!" (Okko's Inn) is a low-key yet touching anime for girls that airs from 7:14 a.m. on the TV Tokyo network on Sundays.
The anime is based on a series of children's books with the same title written by Hiroko Reijo. Over three million copies of the books, which form part of the Aoi Tori imprint for elementary and junior high school students published by Kodansha Ltd., have been printed to date.
The central character is Oriko, nicknamed Okko, an elementary school student in the sixth grade who loses her parents in a traffic accident. She is sent to live with her grandmother, who runs a ryokan inn called Harunoya at an onsen hot spa resort.
Harunoya is haunted by the ghost of a boy called Uri-Bo who is visible only to Okko. At Uri-Bo's urging, Okko starts training to become the successor of the inn and she works hard politely serving the various strange guests that visit.
There is no magic or transformation in this anime. Okko clad in her kimono uniform features in a story that mostly develops inside Harunoya, with interactions between the characters the only source of drama. The show's time slot is about 15 minutes long, and a narrator gives an account of the story at the beginning and end of each episode.
"It's like a morning drama [on NHK]," said Mitsu-yuki Masuhara, the anime's director, citing the similarity of the format with the popular NHK-G show.
"There are no eye-catching themes like saving the earth or going on a great adventure. But many things do happen every day in the ordinary world of Okko," said Masuhara, 44.
"I read the original novels for the first time and got hooked on them because they were so interesting. I didn't think it would be difficult to turn them into an anime."
Kudos to established anime studio Madhouse Inc., which produces the work, for its painstaking attention to detail, including such simple elements as the opening and closing fusuma screens. The studio apparently took videos of staff at a real ryokan inn and studied their movements.
Each installment lasts about 10 minutes. Using the time restriction to its advantage, Masuhara briskly shows each episode's buildup, climax and conclusion. As a result, the anime has acquired a quality on par with that of NHK's morning dramas. It gives this work a unique feel among anime aired in recent years.
"I hope it will become a cartoon that invigorates children on Sunday mornings, so they can enjoy watching it and then go out to play," Masuhara said.
A film version directed by Kitaro Kosaka will be released on Sept. 21. Kosaka is an experienced anime director who was the animation director for "Kaze Tachinu," (The Wind Rises) directed by Hayao Miyazaki. The feature-length anime film adaptation of "Wakaokami wa Shogakusei!" will be the first work he has directed since "Nasu Andalucia no Natsu" (Nasu Summer in Andalucia) in 2003.
In fact, the film version was planned before the TV anime.
"I thought it would be the perfect opportunity for me to do what I've always wanted to do," Kosaka said, adding that he was drawn to the way Okko goes about her life when he read the novels. "Through interactions with guests, Okko overcomes her sadness and matures. She doesn't prioritize her emotions. I feel like there hasn't been an anime like this recently," he said.
He was tempted to include extravagant anime-like scenes, especially for the film, such as making Okko fly, but he eventually chose not to. "It's become a very straightforward drama, but [there hasn't been this kind of thing for a while, so] it actually feels quite fresh," he said.
The feature-length anime was entered at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2018 in June and received a great response, which overwhelmed Kosaka.
I have a feeling that the beautiful aspects of Japan depicted in the work were not the only thing the French audience responded to. Whether in the East or West, straightforward dramas are very much in demand.
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