Tonari no Yamada-kun

Underrated imo. I have seen several Studio Ghibli productions, but Tonari no Yomada-kun (My Neighbors the Yamadas) was much different than other Ghibli films. The sketched or newspaper style of this film was something I hadn't seen from Studio Ghibli before, but I enjoyed watching. I feel like Ghibli does well with almost any animation...other than 3d haha. Regarding the actual story, there wasn't really one. The movie was made up of short clips or little moments, which I typically wouldn't like. However, the movie captured life of a family and I got to know each characters personality. My favorite character was Shige:) Although this ... is not one of my favorite Ghibli movies, it is refreshing to see a different art style introduced.

Side note- If you haven't seen any Ghibli movies yet, I recommend watching Spirited Away first!

My review will be a little bit biased, as I don't typically enjoy this type of slice-of-life. I did not particularly enjoy this film, but I recognize that a lot of that is because I just don't like the genre in general.

Tonari no Yamada-kun was a mish-mash of random small storylines presenting a family environment some might enjoy, but that I found rather annoying. The humor may have worked better in the context of the time it was made, but nowadays it just feels like "Boomer Humor", the same tired types of jokes that you often see in Facebook posts your parents like.

Story: ... 6/10. There is no real story to speak of, as this is a 4-koma-style Slice of Life. The individual small stories that are presented are mildly amusing at best and downright frustrating to watch the rest of the time. Several stories presented take far longer than they deserve and feel like a waste of time, and other stories are mildly interesting but not developed at all.

Art: 7/10. The art was very simplistic, which is the style they decided to go with. That's not a negative - it suits the format and was a very informed choice. There are small moments where the art style changes to be more fluid and dramatic, and those small moments absolutely shine. At one point a small portion of a baseball game is shown, and I commented aloud to my partner that the animation looked really good there. The art does not drag this movie down, simple though it is most of the time.

Sound: 5/10. The sound was mediocre, nothing really stood out to me. There was a song at the end that I didn't really enjoy, and the background music was unintrusive. Other than that, I can't really say much. It was just competent.

Characters: 2/10. This is where the movie falls completely flat for me. The entire movie is meant to focus on this family, and yet most of the time I just thought the family was full of awful people. The husband and wife constantly fight and find each other irritating and incompetent, but the movie ends with some "It's worth it for the kids!" type of message that just doesn't hit. The grandmother has some good moments and some bad moments, but mostly just feels antagonistic for the sake of being antagonistic. The son is rude and a bit of a loser, and the daughter is barely in the film, so her moments were few and far between. At one moment the parents lose their daughter in a mall and don't even realize she's not with them until they're well on their way down the highway away from the building. They have enough time to get completely stuck in traffic on their way back, so they were very far away and never noticed their daughter wasn't with them. To me, this just makes them bad parents. The women in the family were incredibly nosy and bothersome to the son, not believing that he could have a girlfriend, which was very mean-spirited. The father was angry and grumpy most of the time, and it just seemed like he was only there because that's what he was supposed to do and didn't enjoy being around the family members at all. None of the people in the family were enjoyable and there were very few characters besides.

Overall: 5/10. I just did not enjoy this movie at all. I'm giving it a five because it has some saving graces and because I know that someone who is more into this genre may enjoy it, but family dynamic slice of life stories just do not do it for me and I was miserable most of the time watching this, just waiting for it to be over.

Biggest Disappointment from the Studio Ghibli.....I just watched this movie and I'm so frustated and disappointed that I can't keep the feeling limited to me. I just have to express my feelings about this movie in this review. I never expected this from Studio Ghibli.

This movie is so pathetic that I have rated it as 4/10. This is the lowest I have ever rated to an anime or movie. Even the OVAs float around 5/10 or 6/10 which are largely junk.

The only thing worth appreciating is the different art style. Though this art style doesn't inspire one to watch the movie/anime but still ... feels refreshing. I am a bit open about the art style and don't complaint much about it.

Apart from that everything feels way below the standards of Ghibli. There is no proper story at all just bunch of random events happening in the life of the Yamadas. The sound effect is quite bad in comparison to Studio Ghibli masterpieces released before and after this movie.

The characters could be said to be somewhat believable but not much. This is another area where I don't complaint about the choice of the storywriter and the production team. But this time around, I am not at all pleased with the characters either.

Well direction doesn't felt to be good either. I know I have no understanding of how direction works and all but what I know is that it is equally important as story. This movie failed in this also. The movie was so relaxing to watch that I was nearly asleep till the mid of story. I felt other tasks like filling up bottles for cold water more interesting than this movie. While watching the movie, I did several such tasks and just was waiting for the movie to end.

One may ask if I was so bored then why continue with this movie. Well its simple, it was the last Studio Ghibli movie that I haven't watched yet. Also, I once stalled the movie for later after watching for first 10 minutes.