Hotori: Tada Saiwai wo Koinegau

Most of my favorite anime consists of stuff that's either obscure or not very well known, or only well known in certain circles. While I've grown up watching anime, it wasn't until 2005 when I learned that anime was originally made in Japan, and I hadn't quite developed my preferences nor made a point of watching anime all the way through until about 2010, when I was in high school. That being said, I lurk on Anime News Network pretty much on a daily basis, and long ago, there used to be this really good weekly column series called Buried Treasure, where Justin Sevakis would ... talk about an obscure anime, its history, his opinions on it, and its overall availability. Some were good, others weren't, but I remember always looking forward to those articles as I always found them very interesting. I actually found a lot of my favorite anime through Buried Treasure, and I'm sad the column was shut down. I do remember the very first Buried Treasure article I saw, which was one talking about a short, little known anime short film called Hotori: Tada Saiwai no Koinegau, which translates to The Simple Hope for Joy, but I saw a subtitled version that translated it as I Only Want Happiness, but I'm just going to call it Hotori for the sake of brevity. The film came out in 2005, airing on Animax and based on a story that was the third winner of the Animax Grand Prix, a contest held by the channel of the same name to see which stories they could adapt to animation in some form. I remember watching Hotori after reading about it and liking it, though I forgot about it for years. This year, I rewatched it, and honestly? I think it still holds up surprisingly well, as much so as it did when I watched it as a kid.

In the year 2034, technology has advanced to the point where humanoid robots can act like actual human beings with memories implanted into them. In a facility known as the personality plant, a robot named Suzu is being prepared to become a replacement son to a family whose child, Ryou, died from a disease, and a nurse monitors his progress every day as he receives new memories and learns all about the complexities of being human, such as understanding emotions and human interaction. While out playing, Suzu encounters a young girl, Hotori, who he finds out is slowly dying from an Alzheimer's-like disease that's making her forget her memories. The two of them become friends and bond over their opposite situations, and slowly, Suzu begins to grapple with his own feelings and doubts about being a replacement for a dead child. But when Hotori's symptoms get stronger, she makes a frightening request: She wants Suzu to shoot her with a gun she found in a greenhouse, as she doesn't want to die having forgotten all that was important to her.

One thing I definitely noticed about Hotori upon rewatching it is that while the film was made in 2005, it really doesn't look like it. It has the look and feel of hand-painted cel anime from the late 90s, complete with slightly foggy backgrounds and the muted color palette. I say this as a compliment though, as the animation itself is pretty okay. Nothing groundbreaking for a digipaint anime from 2005, and by Sunrise standards its budget isn't the highest, but it does its job fairly well. Though if I had one complaint, it's that the eyes on the child characters are a little too big, almost making them look like aliens. It's not as bad as, say, the terrible Ijime OVA, but the big eyes do give the kids this really uncanny look to them. The music fares better though, with every usage of violins, pianos, saxophones, harps, cellos, and acoustic guitars fitting like a glove. I could probably give the soundtrack two words: Restrained and contemplative, never going overboard with trying to make you feel for the kids and their respective plights.

Really, restrained and contemplative are pretty good words to describe Hotori as a whole. The movie is slow and gently paced, and the main conflict is sad, but fairly down-to-earth, with no real antagonist in sight. Since the film has a small cast of characters, and runs for about 40 minutes, it doesn't have a lot of time to develop them fully, which is fine. Characters like Suzu's nurse Usui and Hotori's father and brother serve their roles well, and their personalities and problems are down-to-earth and relatable, even with the sci-fi angle the movie is going for. Suzu and Hotori, the two leads, receive the most screentime and development, and the film makes great use of them, total opposites of one another, but still managing to make them interesting and relatable, showing their weaknesses and strengths and having them subtly change, from Suzu learning more about feelings and emotions to Hotori being scared of losing her memories and all that makes her herself. It also helps that the movie is pretty heavy on "show, don't tell," relying more on body language and facial expressions to convey what the characters are feeling than relying heavily on dialogue and exposition dumping, and the gentle, low-key atmosphere of the film only elevates it, and everything else, beautifully. Even if the characters aren't the most three-dimensional and layered, they don't really feel like stock archetypes, though I wish we could have seen more of Ryou's parents and saw how they came to like Suzu as he is rather than just a replacement for their dead son.

Now, I'm sure people are going to take issue with the fact that a child wants her similarly-aged friend to help her commit suicide, and I can understand why. As far as I can tell, Hotori tackles the subject fairly sensitively and delicately, without relying too heavily on pointless melodrama, milking it for pathos, or treating it lightly. And don't worry, the film isn't as depressing as I'm making it sound, as it also has a pretty nice ending that neatly resolves Suzu and Hotori's arcs. That being said, there are a lot of questions Hotori leaves unanswered as a result of going for that ending, but there are other questions it doesn't really try to answer as well: Since Suzu is a robot, is he going to stay a child forever, or will he grow up physically in some capacity? I can understand wanting to leave some things to the audience's imagination, but...food for thought.

To quote Mr. Sevakis' article, Hotori ~The Simple Hope for Joy~ is a pensive little jewel that reminds us of the joys of simply living, of accumulating memories. It walks a delicate line, maintaining a solid balance between the joy and the sad in life. It's quietly unforgettable. It's a shame there isn't more of it, but I'm glad Hotori is what it is, and I couldn't ask any more from it.

“What exactly makes us people?” is a question that fiction, especially in the last ten years or so, seems to enjoy tackling, and with varying degrees of success. We seem to have an obsession with trying to define the undefined, and figure out exactly what element (if any) dwells within us, differentiates us from each other, and makes us more than just flesh and blood. Hotori: Tada Saiwai wo Koinegau (Eng. “Hotori: The Simple Wish for Joy”) is another one to add to the long list of anime about maintaining an identity in a technologically advanced world, but solid character concepts and good writing in ... general are enough to make it a standout OVA that floats near the top of the mark.

The story, set thirty years in the future, centers on a place called the “Personality Plant.” At the Plant, doctors create robots that are externally identical to humans, and slowly implant them with the memories of real humans who have died or are in the process of dying, thus allowing at least their personalities to live on even if their original bodies are gone. Suzu, a robotic child from the Plant, is being conditioned to turn into a replica of “Ryou,” the dead son of a pair of grieving parents. One day he meets Hotori, a girl suffering from a disease that eats away at her memories. The two share secrets with each other and become close friends. As time passes, Hotori's illness worsens, and the obvious question rears its ugly head: Should she have her memories preserved in a robot?

It's not a complicated story, but it has a certain deviousness in the way it is structured to reflect the aforementioned theme of human identity. The OVA quietly asks whether it'd be better to fade away gently, or fight the inevitable and be forever remembered in a robotic replica. As humans, most of the cast members, Hotori included, seem inclined to think that memories placed in an artificial shell do not a human make; the devious part is that following this line of thought will lead to the conclusion that kind and helpful Suzu is not a “real” person, but an empty construct, a statement that no one, least of all Hotori, seems overly enthusiastic to make. The story and its narrative themes are cleverly interwoven, and the distinct lack of philosophical jargon or lengthy exposition is a definite plus.

The OVA finds two noteworthy characters in Suzu/Ryou and Hotori. What makes them interesting is that they're fundamentally different in their illnesses—Hotori's memories are rapidly disappearing, while Suzu is rapidly gaining new ones—yet the effect on both of them is similar. They both feel like they're losing themselves, and question who they really are. So, despite the fact that they're opposites on one level, they're also capable of understanding each others' doubts and fears in a very personal way. This well-thought-out relationship is the driving force behind the OVA. At forty minutes, it wouldn't be fair to compare the character development found here to that of a feature-length film or a series, but given the rather limited time frame, a commendable job has been done. The pair might not be fully realized individuals in the way that we typically think of memorable characters, but they're strong concepts that are used to great effect.

I'm generally wary of the use of children as main characters, as they're sometimes included for the sole reason of preying on the audience's baser instincts and generating cheap sympathy, but here, I don't think that's the case. The OVA works, in part, because it adroitly points out that children can sometimes have a much better sense of what's right—what should and shouldn't be done—than adults. When the pair finally decide on the path they want to take, they proceed with ominous finality. These are kids who believe in nothing but each other, and there exists a certain terrible gravity in watching them put their heads together to make decisions that would turn most rationally thinking adults into sobbing wrecks. We don't sympathize with them just because they're kids, we sympathize with them because they're kids who are forced to bear responsibilities that no child should ever have to bear, and make adult decisions when their only tool is the simplistic logic of children.

The OVA's weakest link is the music. There's nothing wrong with the soundtrack itself—quite the opposite. Much of its strength lies in orchestral pieces that start off subdued, but slowly build to an explosion of strings when the moment is right. However, odd musical choices occur on a couple of occasions. These normally manifest themselves in the form of upbeat jazzy/contemporary songs playing at times when they really shouldn't be, leading to some strange mishaps in which the scene seems to be saying one thing while the music is saying quite another. Taken as a whole, the music is better than average, and these flaws, while noticeable, aren't worth getting in too much of a twist over.

Artistically, it's a pretty good looking product for its day and age. For the most part, the characters are designed well, but they have extremely small mouths (even by anime standards) and there are several moments where they're speaking, but the lip-flap animation is near invisible, making it almost look like conversations occur in a voice-over. The visual centerpiece of the OVA is the secret greenhouse where Suzu and Hotori play—as it should be, given its symbolic role. It's an attractive design, with the radiant greens and blues, highlighted by sunlight, being an obvious contrast to the dark institutional halls of the Personality Plant. There's a noticeable lack of depth in the backgrounds, giving them a flatness that's not very appealing, but the distinct use of light to bring out their coloration balances it out.

Overall, this is an impressive OVA. There are some minor missteps in the technical areas, but inside lies a cleverly written story that approaches its themes with applause-worthy care. And at forty minutes, I'd say that's an accomplishment.

Hotori is a movie that picks you up. slaps you in the face, tells you not to cry and then just leaves you there to snivel like a baby, all in the span of about half an hour.

I have to say that I feel bad fo the producers, unless they were going for a minimalistic film this just feels to me like a nice big plot confined to a low budget and bad art. I feel like they wanted to do something but they didn't have the time or money, and thus for me the feeling of a true story I could care about was ... lost.

It felt very rushed and when the sad moments lasted only seconds I would start to cry only to be carted off to another scene so they could fit them all in the short amount of time they had. I couldn't really care about the characters because I couldn't connect, they seemed very flat and only meant to fit into their specific parts for the movie, not free thinking characters who would later surprise me, and they didn't. The unexpected became mundane when the art became very moe and big eyed at all the wrong times.
It invalidated itself, which is sad because it had some potential.

All in all a good plot ruined by pretty much everything else...