Random Anime Review: Keiichi Hara’s Summer Days with Coo
I’m in the mood for excavating my favourite anime directors’ early work, so after covering Keiichi Hara’s 2010 Colorful recently, it seems only sensible to look at his very first non-franchise cinematic anime. His directing career began with a 3-year stint as animation director on perennial kids anime Doraemon (1983–1986), followed by a couple of years on TV anime Esper Mami (1987–1989). His longest assignment was as movie director for the hilariously scatalogical Crayon Shin-chan franchise. Between 1993 and 2005 he directed no fewer than thirteen annual Crayon Shin-chan films.
Finally, in 2007, after 20 years of planning, he was permitted to direct his dream project, an anime movie based on two well-regarded Japanese children’s novels about the adventures of a mythological water sprite, a Kappa named Coo. Kappa are a type of “Yokai”, a creature from Japanese folklore, said to live in and around waterways. They appear somewhat frog-like, with a bird-like facial beak, turtle-like shell on their back, a mop of unruly hair on their head, and a small depression on their crown that holds a puddle of water. Their stories paint them as mischievous but polite, shy creatures. Away from their native environment they cannot survive long, as their head-puddle dries up, causing them to dessicate.
Summer Days with Coo begins towards the end of the Samurai age, around two centuries ago at the close of the Tokugawa era. For an otherwise (mostly) family-friendly film, the first five minutes are unflinchingly brutal, as infant kappa Coo witnesses the brutal, bloody mutilation and murder of his father by a drunken samurai. Here is first laid the threads of a plot that will run throughout the whole film — similar to Isao Takahata’s Pom Poko — about the tensions between human progress and the natural world. The samurai want to illegally drain the kappas’ home swamp to use it for agriculture, as rapid industrialisation encroaches upon the hithertofore unspoilt countryside.
Still traumatised by his father’s death, Coo falls into a crevice caused by a subsequent earthquake, where he dessicates and is essentially fossilised. Two hundred years later, in the modern era, Coo’s fossil is discovered by 10-year-old Koichi Uehara who inadvertently revives him by washing him in a sink. The reanimated Coo is immediately discombobulated by the modern world, distraught to discover his beloved swamp is now a block of flats, and heartbroken to realise that he may be the last of an extinct species.
Coo soon becomes an integral part of the Uehara family, immediately accepted by Koichi’s laid-back father, though his cautious mother and bratty little sister take longer to come around. Gentle, humorous family scenes make the backbone of the story, with Koichi teaching Coo about the modern world, and Coo effortlessly beating every family member (except mother!) at his favourite sport of Sumo wrestling. Despite being deeply steeped in Japanese culture, the loving, bickering-filled familial relationships are universal. Koichi’s little sister Hitomi is the last to accept Coo, but becomes very emotionally attached to him once she lowers her defences. His parents are depicted as very normal, average adults, decent people who do everything they can to protect their family, and Coo too.
Summer Days with Coo’s structure is quite episodic, perhaps because it’s based on two novels rather than one. Hara reportedly had to cut around half an hour from its runtime (some of which had already been animated), meaning entire subplots were excised. Despite this, it still runs at a hefty 138 minutes in duration, though I found the pacing was excellent and not once did I feel bored. Both central characters are so well realised, their joy in simple pleasures like cycling with arms outstretched, or swimming in a cool, clear river, is infectious.
The section where Koichi alone takes Coo into the country to search for surviving kappa is a particular highlight. The rural Japanese landscape is beautiful, bucolic and relaxing, yet an elegaic melancholy underlies every one of Coo’s interactions with the people he meets. Despite the kindness of Koichi’s family, he’s always acutely aware that he’s alone, that he’s different, that the world has changed and he can never go back. They visit a gorgeous traditional Japanese inn, and within it Coo meets a little girl yokai who haunts the building (apparently bringing prosperity, as a “beneficial spirit”). When she advises Coo that she’s not seen another kappa in over a century, it threatens to plunge him from mere melancholy into depression.
SIGNIFICANT ENDING SPOILERS FOLLOW
However he has little time to process this revelation as the plot kicks into high gear as the media get wind of Coo’s existence, and everything starts to spin out of control for the Uehara family. At this point, Summer Days with Coo most closely resembles Steven Spielberg’s ET, in that our young main character’s magical friend is no longer secret, and other, perhaps nefarious agencies want a piece of him. With the press barricading them inside their own house, the atmosphere becomes claustrophic, and it becomes clear that Coo and his adoptive family’s cozy domestic life cannot continue.
Poor Coo becomes increasingly agitated by the intrusion of modern life and media, and his frantic attempts at self-defence sometimes cause more harm than good. When he’s forced to appear on live television, it all goes predictably wrong when the idiot media executives make a very poor choice of other guests… It culminates in a frantic and chaotic chase across modern Tokyo, as Coo, aided by loyal family dog Ossan (literally: “Old Man”) attempts to escape the ever-present gaze of the media (impossible in the age of the cellphone).
Ossan is an interesting character — a rescue dog who had been horribly abused by his previous owner, who recognised the younger Koichi’s boyhood innocence and followed him home. It seems Koichi has precedent in adopting strays. Ossan sees it as his job to protect the Uehara family, and he doesn’t mind being tied up because it ensures he gets fed, and is better than being a stray. Coo sees him as a source of emotional support, and their relationship is deeply affecting, especially when it ends in tragedy. Ossan is a Very Good Dog.
Summer Days with Coo’s climax, with Coo climbing the Tokyo Tower to escape his pursuers sees Coo at his lowest, despite his elevation. Considering suicide, it’s only by supernatural intervention from a spectacular water dragon that convinces him it’s not yet time to join his ancestors. It’s pretty heavy stuff for a children’s film — but that’s not a criticism. I think children’s films should sensitively cover meaty subjects and difficult feelings, they should never talk down to their audience.
Much like Hara’s later Colorful, Summer Days with Coo doesn’t shy away from these darker aspects of life. Nothing quite plumbs the depths as the opening scene’s murder of Coo’s father, but it also covers such subjects as bullying, sexism, media harrassment, animal abuse, depression and grief. Koichi’s fellow male students are realistically unpleasant, as often is Koichi himself in his treatment of female classmate Sayako, despite how caring she is towards him. Little kids can be unfair, judgemental and horrible to one another and although Summer Days with Coo doesn’t overly dwell on this, it does paint its characters as flawed, three-dimension human beings, insecure and sometimes cruel.
This duality of humanity — sometimes kind, sometimes callous, is a central theme. Coo has been brought up to view humans with suspicion, to never associate with them because he’s been told they’re all devils who destroy everything they touch. His father obviously had good reason to attempt to instill such fear and prejudice, but Coo comes to recognise that there is good in people too, especially as manifested in the love shown to him by the Uehara family.
The ending, of course, is bittersweet. How could it have been anything else? Coo grows up to forge his own path, and we never do get a definitive answer to whether he finds more of his own kind or not. Original novel author Masao Kogure died in 2007 before the film’s release, so never wrote a sequel. Hara himself (along with co-writer Miho Maruo) wrote a novel sequel Summer for Coo in Year Six in 2013, illustrated by Summer Days with Coo’s chief animator Yuichiro Sueyoshi. Apparently they even managed to work in some of the subplots cut from the film. To my knowledge, this has never been translated into English.
SPOILERS END
Summer Days with Coo is released on Blu-ray in the US by GKids, and in the UK by Anime Limited. The UK version is a limited edition with dual-format, so also comes with region 2 DVD. It comes in a rigid cardboard box, with a 12-page booklet with a very useful, interesting essay by renowned anime journalist Jonathan Clements. (Without said essay, finding some of the background on this film would have been very difficult, so thanks Mr Clements!) There’s also five nice art cards with stills from the film displaying some of the beautifully painted backgrounds that do so much to evoke a convincing sense of place.
Unfortunately it only comes subtitled in English, I guess they felt this anime was too obscure to justify the cost of a dub, which is a real shame, as that limits its appeal. By no means could this be considered a mainstream anime in the West, but Summer Days with Coo deserves your attention, as does director Keiichi Hara himself. I’ve reviewed all four of his non-franchise films now, and I can’t wait to see what he’ll make next.
Summer Days with Coo
Directed by: Keiichi Hara
Screenplay by: Keiichi Hara
Based on the novels by: Masao Kogure
Music by: Kei Wakakusa
Production by: Shin-Ei Animation
Japanese cinematic release: July 28, 2007
US Blu-ray release (GKids): January 21st, 2020
UK Blu-ray release (Anime Limited): Feb 15th, 2021
Language: Japanese audio with English subtitles
Runtime: 138 minutes
BBFC rating: 12
