Chiikawa
The latest aptly titled Spider-Man entry cues up Avengers: Doomsday at the expense of Spidey today.
Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of the Mermaid Island
Director: Kei Oikawa • Writer: Nagano
Starring [Japanese]: Haruka Aoki, Makoto Tanaka, Ari Ozawa, Minori Suzuki
Japan • 1hr 39mins
Opens Hong Kong August 6 • I
Grade: B-
Another day, another animated Japanese phenomenon breaks into the zeitgeist, this time it’s the movie version of Chiikawa, the hugely popular web manga by illustrator Nagano. What started as single panel posts on social media in 2020 has turned into another cult of kawaii-ne; when you have your own Uniqlo tee-shirt, you’re a star. Anyway, the panels were followed by a web series, and then nearly 400 episodes of a Fuji TV series, and now a movie that’s been a massive box office hit at home. For every random person on the street who’s never heard of Chiikawa there’s probably four or five that adore the gender non-conforming creatures of indeterminate origin.
Journeyman director Kei Oikawa’s Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of the Mermaid Island | 映画ちいかわ 人魚の島のひみつ finds the central trio – Chiikawa (Haruka Aoki, returning from the series like all the main cast), the one with the purse, Hachiware (Makoto Tanaka), the one with the blue… ears/hat, and Usagi (Ari Ozawa), the beige one – on an adventure to a semi-mysterious island in search of ramen and ice cream that turns into a chaotic nightmare. Because despite the cute factor and the charmingly lo-fi 2D animation, Mermaid Island is an emotional hellscape of murder, attrition and revenge. WTF? Despite the dark undercurrents the film is thick with bullshit songs about friendship and curry tonkatsu, and whips around tonally so violently it’s hard to get a handle on it as a cohesive narrative. I don’t think Chiikawa fans are going to give a shit though.
It’s a lot of cute. Dark, but cute
Mermaid Island is deceptive in its storytelling. It starts with Usagi finding a flyer – a stork (?) drops it on them – inviting anyone with said flyer to Mermaid Island for a monster hunting job (that pays in ramen and ice cream) to help the islanders with the local beastie Siren (Minori Suzuki). It seems like an easy gig (unsurprisingly it’s a Nagano jab at the gig economy), however the trio’s tag-along friends are a bit more suspicious, especially Rakko (Yuma Uchida) who thinks the offer is shady AF.
Turns out Rakko was right, and the job to defeat Siren is a lot harder than advertised, thanks to the existing laundry list of grievances between the islanders and Siren and her two assistants that dates back ages. Suffice it to say there’s a great deal of bad blood between the two groups: there were three assistants at one time, and the islanders send out the hunting call becuase Siren has been picking them off forever. Oikawa and Nagano sprinkle nods to the modern economic landscape as we know it, a little folk horror and a heaping helping of guilt, resentment and whether or not it’s possible to shake off the ghosts of the past into a brightly coloured, chirpy “family” film. It’s a clever bait-and-switch that’s unfortunately undone by its aggessive cuteness, a visual and aural style that tries hard to transcend its aesthetics but will remain firmly in its lane and struggle to reach non-fans. But it doesn’t matter, because the fans are legion.
In some ways, Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of the Mermaid Island recalls The Birth of Kitaro: Mystery of GeGeGe, in that it starts as one thing and then takes a mind-blowingly dark turn in Act Two – though GeGeGe’s source material is more in line with its themes, as was its artwork. Mermaid Island has plenty to say about the world, about Japan, about human nature – and possibly about cannibalism, though it’s hard to say for sure – but Nagano as a screenwriter has yet to master pacing, relying too heavily on saccharine songs to pad out the run time, and take Chiikawa from web and TV short to feature. Pithy social observations get lost and diluted inside the film’s teased out plotting and frequently distracting food montages that work best in small doses, at least for newbies. That said, there is something inherently soothing about the outline drawings and stripped down animation that makes for an appealing watch, and the film’s success (US$25 million and counting just at home) means there very likely could be a sequel that addresses the post-credit stinger (yeah, stay in your seats), the one that hints at even more revenge action and an even darker story. Cute, but dark.