It’s the first Studio Ghibli film proper, and it’s a corker, containing two reasonably kickass female characters, a steam train chase, skypirates, magic crystals, airships, a mysterious floating city and some damn fine robots. It’s a sort of steampunk sci-fi ecofable. It even has a section set in what is clearly a parallel universe Welsh mining town, inspired by Hayao Miyazaki’s trip to Wales and interest in the miners’ strike in the early 1980s.

Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli can generally be relied upon for more interesting and resourceful heroines than your average Disney or Pixar fodder, even if they are a bit, er identically similar. But in Laputa you can read the whole film as a condemnation of patriarchal power. Seriously – the government, the military and the monarchy line up against a girl and her male friend (who represent the future, protecting one another and fighting alongside each other as equals) and a band of pirates captained by a truly formidable woman.

There is a bit of a science vs nature theme, but it’s not clear cut, as the pirates rely on technology as much as the military do. Technology and nature are shown to be in harmony in the great overgrown gardens of the ancient city of Laputa, tended for centuries by a solitary robot.

Anyway, back to the womens. Orphan Sheeta is the central character, and although she might at first seem more passive than the Ghibli girls to come in Spirited Away, My Neighbour Totoro and Howl’s Moving Castle, she is quietly courageous, getting in a fair bit of fighting, struggling, attacking, escaping and running away. In the dramatic first minutes of the film, for example, she acts boldly and bravely and strikes out against her captors:

It’s also worth bearing in mind that Laputa came out in 1986, and Sheeta represented a fairly significant departure from your average anime heroine at that point. As well as being smart, resourceful and brave, Sheeta is powerful. Interestingly, she inherits this power – in the form of the ‘levitation stone’, a secret true name and powerful magic spells – from her mother.

Although her counterpart, the headstrong Pazu, styles himself as her protector, and does do a bit of rescuing, the traditional gender roles are blurred. Rebecca Johnson highlights this in her essay Kawaii and kirei: Navigating the Identities of Women in ‘Laputa: Castle in the Sky’ by Hayao Miyazaki and ‘Ghost in the Shell’ by Mamoru Oshii:

Even the role reversal displayed between Sheeta and Pazu is prominent, questioning the notion of gender roles that men and women take. For example, Sheeta tries to protect Pazu after their initial capture by the army, denying that she needs help. In this instance, both characters are “damsels in distress” since they are both under the threat of the army. Instead of taking on a traditional role as a damsel, Sheeta takes on the male role of protector.

There are also two scenes in which Pazu cooks for them both, which is a little thing, but it makes me happy. Go go normalizing atypical gender behaviours!

In the climactic scene they stand side by side, holding hands as equals, and act together as their (feminine) compassion compels them to an act of terrific (masculine) violence and destruction in which they sacrifice themselves for the greater good.

The other main female character, piratical matriarch Dola, is just wonderful. She’s a bit like Granny Weatherwax crossed with Desperate Dan. Here she is outsmarting, outfighting and outrunning her burly band of sons (she appears around five minutes in):

My favourite bit is the way she discards her skirt when things start to kick off. Rebecca Johnson sees Dola as a particularly radical character in the context of the dominant social ideals of Japanese womanhood. As she says:

Dola treats the world around her as personal territory without fear or hesitancy. Leading her family, a band of pirates, she is a take charge woman who shows her Japanese audience that women are more than capable of casting away the kawaii syndrome plaguing them…

The Japanese word for mother is “okasan” which literally means “the person at the back of the house”. However, it is safe to assume that Dola, as her sons’ captain, is far from being “the woman at the back of the house.” Really, Dola is defying the common stereotype of Japanese women because her success is not being measured in terms of the motherly and wifely capabilities by which many contemporary Japanese women are judged. The common Japanese phrase “women are weak but mothers are strong” is one-sided, and proved wrong by Dola. Her characterization and actions show that she is not only a strong mother but a smart and strong woman in her own regard too.

For all her ferocity and ruthlessness, Dola does have a compassionate side and becomes deeply protective of the two orphans once they have proved themselves to her. Arcadean has an interesting analysis of Dola’s shifting gender identity, although I don’t completely agree with it.

Even now the film fills me with wonder, and the original score and use of silence (intolerable to Disney, apparently) is full of beauty. It left a lasting impression, and is probably responsible for my interest in anime and manga, and certainly for my profound love of robots. And I reckon you could do a lot worse on the role model front than Sheeta and Dola.

So, Arrietty is an adaptation of Mary Norton’s childhood-favourite series (and don’t forget the films!) The Borrowers, which is about an ecologically invalid subspecies of human beings that are inexplicably about five inches tall or less and basically subsist off stolen goods and services. This adaptation is by Studio Fucking Ghibli, who also did my favourites Howl’s Moving Castle and Princess Mononoke. Oh, and not forgetting the godlike Spirited Away and My Neighbour Totoro.

I literally couldn’t love Studio Ghibli films more if I tried. They are a tour de force in animation, steadfastly championing the 2D cel-shaded animation genre like the 24-carat geniuses they are. Pixar and Disneamworks can’t touch them. People are leaping frogs about Pixar producing its first female protagonist!! with the (and rightly so) hugely anticipated Brave – but Studio Ghibli have been writing fantastic, inspirational female protagonists since they first began with Sheeta in 1986’s Laputa: Castle in the Sky. I mean, come on. While we’re fannying about here in the West with bloody Sucker Punch apparently making history with having so many female protagonists, they’ve made things like Princess Mononoke, where not only is the title girl a complete badass, she’s also actually not by-the-book squeaky blameless sacrificial-lamb benevolent. She has power and flaws and rage and potency and – wait, this is a review of Arrietty.

Arrietty is the first film to be directed by the Studio’s newest induction to directing, Hiromasa Yonebayashi, and it’s absolutely magnificent. I am slightly ashamed to admit that, while I read the first Borrowers book when I was a kid, I can’t remember much about it, other than Arrietty being great fun and very empathic as a main character, and that I wanted to know exactly how they made their clothes. The film does an awful lot for scale fetishists like me (SMALL VERSIONS OF BIG THINGS THAT ARE JUST THE SAME!!!) and explores in quite some visual detail the things that will change at that level of minutiae – in particular, surface tension and the behaviour of liquids. How they pour tea! Is amazing! I squealed in the cinema!

The story is simple and quite static. It takes place in only a few days, and really, nothing huge happens in the vast scheme of things, but that’s just it: from your perspective as an audience, nothing much has changed at all. But from Arrietty’s tiny perspective, everything has! Her house that she’s lived in all her life has had to be abandoned, she’s met more of her own species, having believed that her family were the only ones left, and she’s made friends with a human boy, despite her parents, Pod and Homily, warning her of the inherent dangers therein. Everything’s changed. Her whole worldview has been rocked to the core – and yet Yonebayashi keeps us, the audience, at this cool, gentle, static distance with his long still shots of water dripping off the edges of plants and Cécile Corbel’s gentle music. It’s amazing. It’s like he does perspective with your perspective.

That was the most amazingly pretentious sentences I’ve ever written and I’m not even sorry. But yes. There’s a lot of focus on scale, naturally, in this. That’s where the magic is. From the moment you see Arrietty, fleeing expertly from a laugh-out-loud-amusingly-faced fat cat, you’re enchanted. She’s so small. And everything she has in her life, from bay leaves to fish hooks, feel so familiar and worn with use. You’re captivated between the alien nature of observing life lived at 1/8th scale, and being charmed by how familiar it is at the same time. It’s perfect. Dude, did I mention the tea?

The main difference between (what I remember of) the first book and the film is firstly that it’s vastly simplified, and the inclusion of Spiller (“Dreadful Spiller” in t’books) as a motion catalyst. He’s introduced having rescued Pod from a sprained ankle in the rain – and my god, the moment he came on screen? I fell in love. I am going to cosplay as that boy every day for the rest of my life. He’s completely amazing. He’s wild and awkward and ingenious and has a KETTLE FOR A BOAT. He’s a little bit of a shoehorned-in love interest of sorts for Arrietty, but the shows of affection are mostly from him to her – she’s far too busy escaping crows and playing catch with woodlice. And even then, there’s only arguably two of these awkward Spiller-y shows of admiration, so you needn’t worry – as I do – that an oafishly stapled-on heteronormative TWOO WUV will impinge upon your film-viewing.

Basically, I want Spiller to have a cameo appearence in everything. Which will happen, because I will dress as him and climb onto sets of productions and films and things and run around in the background.

Overall, this is a brilliant directing debut for Studio Ghibli’s brand spanking new physics-obsessed boy, and I’m very excited to see what else he’ll be doing in the future. I’d compare him to Miyazaki, but I can’t, because all I’ll do is shriek “HOWL’S MOVING CASTLE” seventeen times before passing out in a flood of my own tears.

YOU SHOULD SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• You should always see a Studio Ghibli film immediately and without reservation because if you don’t, I truly believe you become one of the soulless
• This is a charming adaptation that I think does Norton proud – if only for the fact that it engrossed me so completely that I now have to return to the novels!
• Niya the cat is side-splittingly hilarious
• THE TEA. LOOK AT HOW THEY POUR THE TEA.

YOU SHOULD NOT SEE THIS FILM BECAUSE:

• I can only think of one reason that’d prevent you from seeing this film, and that is if all the cinemas in your area immediately burn to the ground tonight.