Remembering Animation's Legendary Isao Takahata

Much of Isao Takahata’s 1991 animated film Only Yesterday is told through vivid recollections: Its Japanese title, Omoide Poro Poro, literally means “memories come tumbling down.” The protagonist, Taeko Okajima, is a 27-year old woman heading to the Japanese countryside on vacation when she is idly struck by memories of her 10-year-old self, formative stories and events that take on new meaning for her in hindsight. The present-day scenes are animated realistically—the characters are less cartoonishly expressive, their facial muscles given greater detail. Meanwhile, the flashbacks are more plainly drawn, with unfinished backdrops rendered in a hazy, half-remembered glow.

In one scene, young Taeko walks home past a boy who, according to some of her giggling schoolmates, has professed that henaturalistic. It’s the kind of scene that could only be executed by Takahata, one of the founders of the legendary Studio Ghibli, who time and again mixed the impressionistic joy of animation with an unusually tight grasp on realism and the nuance of human relationships.