Flashback: My Neighbors the Yamadas – unusual Ghibli animation captures the little pleasures in life
Though eclipsed by other Studio Ghibli outings, Yamadas is a gently comic work with plenty of nostalgic appeal
Based on a comic by Hisaichi Ishii that has been running in the Asahi newspaper since 1991, My Neighbors the Yamadas was a box-office disappointment for Japanese animation powerhouse Studio Ghibli. Directed by studio co-founder Isao Takahata, the film made 1.56 billion yen in 1999 – about one-tenth the total of the previous Ghibli film, the 1997 Hayao Miyazaki mega-hit Princess Mononoke. Takahata did not release another film for 14 years, until the 2013 fantasy The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.
Yamadas was an experiment for Takahata and Studio Ghibli in more ways than one – ways their core audience and even fans of the comic were obviously not ready for. First, instead of the youthful protagonists of so many Ghibli films, with stories centred on journeys of self-discovery (Takahata’s 1991 Only Yesterday) or fantasy worlds (Miyazaki’s 1988 My Neighbor Totoro), Yamadas features the daily misadventures of an average middle-class family, presented in vignettes inspired by the comic’s four-frame format.
Also, instead of the gorgeously detailed, hand-drawn look of earlier Ghibli animations (though Princess Mononoke was produced with digital assists), Yamadas was entirely computer generated, in a style similar to watercolours and executed with Ghibli-esque flights of fantasy. It was a precursor to the far more Impressionistic style of Princess Kaguya, which was critically well received.
