Hare Tokidoki Buta

Hadn't ever heard of this film before Discotek Media licensed it and put it out on Blu Ray. It was such an obscure thing for them to license I just had to see it as soon as I could. Having done so I thought this movie was okay. Nothing overly special but fine in the end, so lets get into why...

The Story is fairly basic (and piggy), split into two distinct halves there isn't anything overly amazing about it. The story revolves around Noriyasu, his journal, his pen, his imagination and the fantastical and somewhat bizarre consequences of this combination. I mean just because Noriyasu ... writes that it rained pigs doesn't mean that it will really happen right?

It's got a great innocence and imagination to it for sure but there are few consequences and as such no real depth. This is fine, I mean it's just meant to be a young kids film mainly and for that it serves up some very creative scenarios and a few lessons are learnt along the way too. But yeah while very imaginative on the surface I didn't really get anything beyond that. I'm okay with this others might not be. I mean at just 72 minutes it certainly doesn't outstay it's welcome but some viewers may not find the time spent overly fulfilling in regards to the story, despite it's innocent charm.

The animation is really amazing, very colorful and fun and while true to the images in the original books it seems they took the animation and detail way further which really brought the whole thing to life while still staying true to the source material. Yes it's a sketchy style but it's very well done, I like the shots of the cities in particular. Also when it's Pig Time there is some really enjoyable sequences. This is definitely the stand out area of this film and I would guesstimate the part that any Anime fan older than 10 is likely going to derive the most pleasure from.

Definitely also worth mentioning the performance of the main VA as Noriyasu as it's very impressive. Voiced by an 11-12 year old Daisuke Namikawa (a prolific VA nowadays) I presume this was one of his earliest roles, if not his first? But yeah what a wonderful performance, he really is fantastic and the fact we get to hear this role not from an adult woman but from an actual young male child makes it all the more interesting and believable. Daisuke even as a child himself was clearly a great actor as he really conveys that child persona in this film. Full of life, creativity and imagination as each newfangled idea unwillingly sets him down another fantastically strange venture. The chuckle we hear everytime Noriyasu thinks he has finally nailed down what to do next or just the sheer enjoyment he finds in his imagination is just glorious and so endearing.

So yeah the film is colorful, imaginative and has a very endearing main character. But overall it's lacking any real substance and depth (at least to anyone old enough to already know the few lessons on offer). If you should watch it is based soley on how much you value 72 minutes of your life and also how far down the Anime Rabbit-hole you like to travel. I thought it was worth it but I'll leave you to decide whether you feel the same.

Hey kids! Remember an old anime called Tokyo Pig? I remember seeing a few episodes of it here and there on TV when I was a kid, but I'm pretty sure I only remember it because the character designs were permanently chibi. The thing is, Tokyo Pig, or its original title, Hare Tokidoki Buta, translated as Fair Then Partly Piggy, actually started off as a series of children's picture books. The 90s TV series is a little more well known, but the series actually had a feature-length movie produced in 1988 with a premise that was very different from how the series turned out. Discotek ... even put it out on DVD and blu-ray a number of years ago, though that release is now out of print. It's streaming on Crunchyroll, for those who want to watch it. I saw it recently myself and...not gonna lie, this movie is pretty juvenile.

Third grader Noriyasu Hatakeyama is your average kid who unfortunately isn't very good at anything. He doesn't pay attention in class, he messes up the most basic tasks, and he's gotten the nickname Two-Bit because of his screw-ups. But one thing he does take pride in is that he writes in his journal every day. One day, he catches his mother reading his journal and he's not too happy about it. But rather than, y'know, tell her she shouldn't invade his privacy like a normal person, he assumes she's gonna try and read it again, deciding to write about really crazy stuff that could never happen in real life, such as raining pigs and eating pencils for dinner. To his surprise though, the crazy things he writes in his journal magically come to life, and weirder than that, everybody treats it all as normal! Things get even crazier when he tries to take a crack at making his own newspaper and writing fake news for fun, resulting in an apocalyptic pig holiday!

Yeah, that premise is as stupid and childish as it sounds, and no, the movie never explains how or why Noriyasu's writings come to life. I didn't really jive with this, as the whole movie very much screams "JUST for kids" with how juvenile its premise and its take on it is. It just expects you to believe that everything Noriyasu writes just magically comes to life. This isn't necessarily a bad thing by itself, but the movie seemed content to just abuse it for the sake of dragging the movie out, and honestly, the movie is pretty slow paced. A lot of it just consists of stuff happening and Noriyasu reacting to it while everybody else treats it as another day. The characters are pretty bland and one-note, too, both the main and side-cast. The soundtrack isn't much to write home about either, other than the fact that the kids singing the opening theme just can't sing for the life of them. The ending song is much nicer and easier on the ears, though.

That being said, the animation, for its time, is pretty good. The backgrounds have a lot of creativity put into them, a fun mix of both children's crayon drawings and watercolor, and the actual motion for the characters is pretty smooth. Since the characters are all deliberately drawn in the chibi style, this makes them easier to animate, and the creators really go buck wild here. But that's honestly about all that Fair Then Partly Piggy can offer in terms of positives. I wouldn't call Fair Then Partly Piggy a bad movie, but it was clearly made for the sole purpose of keeping kids eyes glued to the TV for a little over an hour and not much else. But if you want to put this on for your kids or for yourself, feel free! It's just not for me personally.