Pom Poko is a movie about the trials of a group of people (they are tanuki, mythical shapeshifting racoon people) as they try to survive the encroach of man on their forest they call home. The tanuki are a whimsical bunch, they try hard, but they are easily distracted by games and good food. They try to get along with each other, but they are often divided on various issues. However, when man starts to push in on their living space, various smart leaders in their ranks realize what is happening and that to survive they will need to unify in order to remain. This starts as general pranks and mischief on the construction workers and people moving to the area. This stalls progress somewhat, but the gears of the machine continue as people continue to move into the area and food begins to become scarce. The tanuki have to start controlling their population and their rations of food.
At about this point the tanuki are forced to make one last stand something to impress and awe the visitors of that area and get their attention. They make festival of sorts using the help of a powerful elderly tanuki that had responded to their cry for help, something that says adamantly "We are here, this is us, this is our way of life". Unfortunately, this is cunningly misinterpreted by the news as a publicity stunt for a new theme park, and progress on the destruction of their homes continues.
At this point, many in their ranks turn to violence, and they decide if it is going to end this way they would prefer to go out with a bang. Many of them are killed, some run away. At this point the few tanuki left, the very advanced shapeshifters, submit themselves to a life of living tiring lives as humans, essentially having at that point been conformed, an idea a smart shapeshifting fox presents to them who has long given up on maintaining his original way of life and now uses his abilities for himself in human society.
The real heart clenching moment in the movie though is when just for a moment the magic of tanuki are able to reveal what the forest used to be. A boy and his mother step out of their house and examine the tanuki and is able to appreciate the forest as it once was.
For me, this is a movie that shows what happens when even the best efforts of genuinely hard working and sincere people can fall straight through the cracks of a fragmented society. I think it is representative of how easy it is to get swept up in the machine and not to realize their is something very special right in front of your eyes. The movie doesn't condemn those that don't go out of their way to examine the world around them, as a matter of fact it acknowledges how tiring and how difficult it can be to live in human society, as the remaining tanuki shapeshifters find the hustle and bustle of daily life difficult to deal with and the pressures it puts them. But if I had one moral to draw from this movie, it wouldn't be cherish the forest or stop destroying the homes of wild life. No, it would be, take a look around you every once in a while. It is a call for conscientiousness. Don't allow those that live differently to get trampled underneath by a machine, and don't allow yourself to easily become swept up in deindividuated.
Otherwise the film is a very good looking and sounding one. English dubs are excellent. The design of the tanuki is very characterized and far from simplified. Many tanuki have been given different personalities. It isn't something I would watch on a lazy Saturday morning, but I would recommend it to anyone for its general viewing power (PG rating), and its powerful message.
