‘Only Yesterday’ by Isao Takahata

There are plenty of assignments I’ve written over the past year that have not found a home nor likely ever will outside my hard drive. In order to share more of what I’ve worked on in grad school, I’m publishing some odds and ends works for your reading pleasure. Enjoy!

A movie review of Isao Takahata’s “Only Yesterday”:

“Only Yesterday” is a memory from your childhood that rushes to the front of your mind without being asked. Throwing you back into your past like it was a pile of blankets. You land on them softly, holding onto them, perhaps even content to stay here and take it all in. You enjoy the warmth of the familiar. But before long, you have to get up and move on. The moment has passed, but your memory and the feelings that came with it are yours to keep.

Taeko (voiced in the new dub version by “Star Wars” newcomer Daisy Ridley) is past the comfy confines of childhood. Now she travels the countryside, experiencing what her younger self missed growing up in the city. But through her journey, she relives many of her old memories, both good and bad: Scolding from her mother, a slap from her dad, but also her first youthful crush and the mortification of becoming a young woman in primary school. Just as she’s happy to work solo and live among her own memories, a new love interest arrives that may not just signal the beginning of new memories but also a different kind of growing up.

Like many of the films from the famous Studio Ghibli, the naturalistic style of “Only Yesterday” lends itself to easily blending fantastical elements flawlessly with its central characters. The transition from memory to present-day (technically, 1982), is subtle and never jarring. The audience is not meant to feel like it has been ripped away from a daydream in the afternoon. We’re invited to reminisce and appreciate the moment before it is stored away in our past. Taeko continues on her path and so do we.

While Hayao Miyazaki (“Spirited Away”) is the better recognized artist at Studio Ghibli, his partner Isao Takahata is just as attentive to character development and details but in a much softer way. Taeko never seems to overeat, but she acts her age (about 10) in her flashback sequences. She pouts, she whines, she struggles with homework. When we see her in the present-day scenes, she’s around 27-years-old (even though she made to look much older). We can tell she’s matured from her younger self. Taeko is calmer, no longer the fiery sprite who flits away from her crush but can work alongside him if need. She’s all grown up, but Taeko is the same as she ever was.

There is an interesting bit of history with “Only Yesterday.” Studio Ghibli’s Stateside equal with deeper pockets, Disney, owned the U.S. rights to their catalog and introduced many to their favorite anime movies. But because “Only Yesterday” deals with the taboo subject of menstruation, the Mouse decided to shelve this Takahata film. In the hands of new U.S. rights owners GKIDS, “Only Yesterday” is finally hitting American theaters 25 years later.

There is a strong sense of nostalgia that pulls you into this movie, and it is all to Takahata’s credit. His portrait of childhood memory is bittersweet, capable of both pain and comfort. It is also about the symbolic end of childhood, when you become aware of someone else’s feelings, wants and desires just as much as your own. Ridley and her vocal co-star Dev Patel do passable jobs with their characters, but familiar voices have never really the real draw of a Studio Ghibli film. It’s the promise of escape to the familiar, the magic of the mundane shining in a new light that keeps audiences coming back generation after generation.

And “Only Yesterday” will have that appeal for decades to come.