LogFAQs > #940753780

38. Miss Hokusai

Johnbobb: 23
Inviso: 25
Karo: 28
Genny: 33
Charon: 34
Red: 35
Jona: 40

Total: 218

Johnbobb: Miss Hokusai is a fine movie that would've done a lot better in a list where it could've stood out more, but this just unfortunately isn't that list. I can really appreciate some of the short segments and the fairly unique art style (in particular, it's one of the few post-Ghibli movies that doesn't act like it wants to be a Ghibli movie). I can't really say more for it than that though. A fascinating subject but not quite captivating enough as a movie.

Inviso: So this is a historical movie, based on the life of a real person. That explains why the plot is meandering and theres not a whole bunch of flow to the story. The main character is standoffish and seems to wander from plot point to plot point with little to no growth or change. I mean, the movie has fun moments, particularly when its using the main character to express disdain for her male counterparts and their tomfoolery, but mostly, shes just a dour stick in the mud. The little sister dies off-screen, and this gets brushed over within one scene of it happening. I justI question some of the creative choices involved in making this movie. I really do. Theres a spiritual element as well that gets introduced, but it never goes anywhere and theres no consistency. The art style is good at least, I guess. But its just pretty bland for something as incoherent in its plot as this was.

Karo: What It Is:
An animated portrait of late-Edo-era Japanese artist Katsushika Oi that is probably about as historically accurate as Disney's Pocahontas.

What I Think:
While this movie is far from being terrible, the fact that not a whole lot happens in the story and the way it is animated in a very uninspired art style really puts the film into the realm of forgettablilty. It focuses mainly on the everyday life of the titular Miss Hokusai, and while that can be entertaining at times a lot of it is very boring. It doesnt help that it takes place in not a particularly interesting period of japanese history, and I also question the wisdom of making an animated biography of someone we know so little about as Oi.

Score: 56/100

Genny: This was a bizarre one for me. At times I found myself engaged and at others bored out of my mind. I think it wouldn't have been so jarring if this had been solely a period piece or a fictional account of fantastical encounters, but instead it's this odd anthology of both and tonally it's all over the place. It's difficult to feel much of anything when O-Ei's little sister passes after so little time is spent getting to know her as a character and some of that time is spent in between telling ghost stories and visiting a gigolo- it just doesn't mesh well together. In addition that epilogue was a fucking downer and I'd have liked Miss Hokusai twice as much if it weren't included.

Charon: Just a bit too episodic for me. I had some hopes with the first of these episodes, with the possibility of some supernatural elements to the film, but unfortunately nothing ever becomes of that. For someone that isn't a fan of this film's format, ranking it along side more traditional movies with a beginning, middle and end is rather difficult. Honestly, would could have a ranking project featuring movies more in line with this genre so films like this get a bit more fair treatment from someone like me perhaps. Because there are definitely interesting moments to be had here, it's just that the disjointed nature of things brings causes me to be natural critical of that style in a group of films that mostly adhere to flow.

Red: A woman cant paint because she isnt having enough sex and at the end of the movie she still apparently cant paint and everything ends abruptly. Nothing in this movie ever attempts to be the slightest bit interesting and one of the things that most surprises me is that I was able to watch the entire thing without falling asleep. The characters dont grow, the old painter dies and at some point I guess we were supposed to care about some of it. Theres some weird spiritual elements in the middle that also go nowhere once resolved.

Jona: The most interesting part about this movie is the format, with it being episodic and having the different plotlines spread throughout the movie. The biggest problem of the movie is that the characters dont develop at all and by the end, it really feels like nothing happened despite the one plotline involving O-Ei and her sister. Most of the plotlines never had me really engaged. O-Eis relationship with her father felt like it was going to be the main focus of the movie, but it just doesnt pan out and nothings changed between them from start to finish. The epilogue is not great with the deaths of the characters just being told to the viewer. The setting is nice with it taking place in 1814 Edo but the soundtrack can be inappropriately modern at times which really took me out of the movie. There are some interesting aspects of this movie, but I just ended up being mostly bored.

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Congrats to azuarc on being really good at predicting stuff