When
scores of penguins suddenly appear in this rural Japanese village, it is a
little like Magnolia, but
exponentially cuter. In fact, these penguins might just save our word as we
know it, but until then, they are quite charming to have around in Hiroyasu
Ishida’s Penguin Highway (trailer here), which won the Satoshi Kon Award at the 2018 Fantasia International Film Festival.
Aoyama
is a reasonably well-socialized fourth grader, considering how smart he is.
Nevertheless, the compulsively-experimenting science whiz is already looking
forward to his future success. When “waddles” of penguins start waddling
through his baffled town—way outsides their natural habitat, obviously—Aoyama is
the first to start formulating hypotheses. Of course, that means he starts researching
in the field, with the help of his loyal pal Uchida. However, he is also rather
interested in the mysterious woman now working at the local dentist, whom he gallantly
refers to as “The Lady.”
She
is smart and has attitude, as well as other things a boy on the verge of
puberty might notice (she is voiced by Yû Aoi, after all). Aoyama realizes he
can learn a lot from her just from their conversations and chess games.
However, his interest in her rises to a higher level when he realizes she
apparently has a mysterious connection to the penguins. As if that were not
enough, Aoyama and Uchida also help their classmate Hamamoto investigate a
phenomenon that pretty clearly holds cosmic significance. Hamamoto is also
quite the junior scientist, which is probably why she has a crush on Aoyama.
Highway is surprisingly
intriguing as science fiction, warmly endearing as a coming of age story, and
it is just the living end as a penguin fantasy. Despite the borderline Summer of ’42 relationship between Aoyama
and the Lady, the film has a lot to offer family viewers, including lessons on
the scientific method and the depiction of two fathers who are smart and engaged
parents (Aoyama and Hamamoto’s dads). Plus, there are all those fun-loving
penguins.
The
animation (with character design work from Yojiro Arai) is visually quite
lovely, but it is the film’s bittersweet vibe that really stick with you. The
trappings are contemporary, but narrative has a timeless element to it. When
you get right down to it, it would be ever so nice to stroll through this burg
in the foothills, with a dozen penguins for company.
To
his credit, Makoto Ueda never dumbs down his screen adaptation of Tomihiko
Morimi’s source novel. There is some clever stuff in here and the stakes get planetary
in scope. Yet, it still faithfully evokes all the optimism and confusion of
young adolescence—with penguins. This film is just a total winner that is just too good for American anime fans to miss out on.
Very enthusiastically recommended, Penguin
Highway had its international premiere at this year’s Fantasia.
