ANI-MOVIES: *From Up On Poppy Hill

Based on a short-lived 80s manga, From Up On Poppy Hill is a coming of age story set in 1963 Japan, just prior to them getting the Olympics(the first time). It was produced by Studio Ghibli, and the second one being directed by Goro Miyazaki, whose father Hayao wrote the screenplay for along with Keiko Niwa. As more of a slice of life tale than the usual Ghibli fantasy, this movie acts a self-aware teenage melodrama.

Umi is the main caretaker of her grandmother's boarding house for ladies. Her mother is studying medicine in America, and her father disappeared during the Korean War. She keeps setting up a flag for ships in the harbor near her house, hoping deep down that her father will recognize it should he return. The school she goes to has an old dilapidated building called the Quartier Latin used by several clubs made entirely of boys, and it is under danger of being demolished to give Tokyo a fresh look when the Olympics come. The head of the school's journalism club Shun is one of the main campaigners trying to save the Quartier Latin, who also wrote about Umi's tradition of setting up her flags. Umi seems to fall for Shun in his heroic efforts to keep the clubhouse up, and convinces a lot of the school's girls to help clean up the joint which prior to that looked like a disaster area for bookworms. Despite their fiery crusade, the clubhouse is still threatened with being torn down, and even though Umi finds her feeling growing for Shun, he discovers from an old photograph that the two of them might have the same father, thus they can't go any further without turning the plot into a stereotypical incest harem anime. The return of Umi's mother from the States sets the story straight on their shared background.

This works as a splendid period piece in the same way the flashback portions of Only Yesterday give the look of 1960s Japan with the nation was trying to speed along progress in order to bury their past in the previous wars. There is some genuine character growth and comradery among the high school student as they try desperately to rescue their clubhouse, which ends up taking a larger portion of the story than the budding teen romance. The animation is not exactly as breathtaking as your average Ghibli production, but as setting is more based in reality in place of the spirit world. The American dub features some surprising additions including Ron Howard, Gillian Anderson, Jamie Lee Curtis, and the late Anton Yelchin as Shun. Probably one of the single most charming anime movies of the new millennium!