Artistically, the film has the same high level of production that the audience has come to expect from Studio Ghibli. Simple, yet stylized characters are surrounded by a world of captured beauty, whether it's Umi's house on Poppy Hill or the Latin Quarter building, everything looks amazing. When the Latin Quarter was first being shown, I actually had flashbacks to the bathhouse from Spirited Away - only where the bathhouse was immaculately clean, the Latin Quarter was disgusting. In that very guy-ish good way though. I felt right at home there and wished I could have gone to a school with a building like that, surrounded by people who love what they do.
The story is perhaps the hardest thing for me to wrap my head around. I enjoyed the film, no doubt about it. The slowly budding relationship between Shun and Umi was well handled; the characters felt real; even side-characters had a lot of life to them. But reading the synopsis here on Anime List, I get confused. The movie does open up with this idea of "tradition VS progress" - both in Umi's opening narration as well as the students struggle to save the Latin Quarter building. While that does act as the backdrop for the main part of the story - that of Shun and Umi's relationship - it doesn't drive the story. By the time the movie ends, there's no final note to this. The point of presenting a versus is to pick a side - in Mononoke is was humanity's greed VS the natural world and Ghibli picked the natural world. But Poppy Hill doesn't choose a side or a make a point.
Unless the point is that hard work will eventually pay off, in which case, fine, but I don't feel like that ties back into the "core" idea. And this bugs me. Most of the Ghibli films have clear points or core themes - whether it's nature, family, or growing up. But Ghibli seems to be bucking these trends with their past few films - Earthsea was pretty much a straight up adventure movie and I honestly have troubles remembering Arietty at all.
The movie otherwise is very laid back and I think that's just director Goro Miyazaki's approach to things. It's one of the reasons Earthsea bombed as hard as it did - it was an adventure movie with no sense of adventure. Much the same, Poppy Hill takes it time presenting itself to us. There are no dramatic builds, no last minute revelations - everything happens at a nice. Slow. Relaxed pace. And then eventually things end. I do feel like Goro was more successful with Poppy Hill, thanks to it being a strict drama, but there definitely needs to be an increased sense of tension during the climax of the film. Rather than being worried about how Umi and Shun would work things out, I just knew that they would and hey, that's alright. I don't necessarily think that Goro's style is a bad thing, but it is a slightly awkward thing. He's just a TEENSY bit off where he needs to be in order to be the kind of story-teller his father is, in my mind, and I really want to see him succeed.
For the most part, From Up on Poppy Hill is a very strong film. Built around well-written characters, the movie utterly succeeds in presenting it's cast well, despite a rather relaxed atmosphere throughout. Beautiful to look at and touching to experience, I think that this movie is a strong addition to Studio Ghibli's always impressive line-up and a step in the right direction for it's director.
