Why Only Yesterday is Ghibli's Overlooked Masterpiece

Hi, hello, and welcome back to Take a Seat. I'm Sean, and today I'll be talking about Studio Ghibli's 1991 film Only Yesterday, directed by Yasao Takahata. Takahata is known for his work directing several of Ghibli's most acclaimed films such as Grave of the Fireflies from 1988 and The Tale of the Princess Kaguya from 2013. In this video, I'm going to give an analysis of this film to explore why I think it doesn't get enough light shed on it as the work of art I see it to be, and why it's my favorite film of all time. Of course, since I will be talking about it in detail, I will be discussing spoilers throughout this video, so if you haven't had the chance to watch this film yet, I would absolutely recommend doing so. But without further ado, let's begin. Only Yesterday follows Taiko Okajima, a 27-year-old woman who takes time off of her office job in the city to work with her relatives in the quieter countryside. The film switches between the past in 1966 and the present in 1982 as Taiko reflects on how her life has turned out and wonders if she has stayed true to the dreams of her past self. The film is based on a manga from 1982 of the same name, written by Hataru Okamoto and illustrated by Yuko Tone. Hayao Miyazaki, who was intrigued by the book, felt there was a lot of potential for it on the screen, though felt he was not up to the task of doing it justice, as Miyazaki would go on to direct films such as Castle in the Sky and My Neighbor Totoro, the potential for an adaptation of the manga stayed in his mind. Eventually, Miyazaki would bring the idea up to Takahata, who would take up the challenge of adapting the Only Yesterday manga to the big screen. Immediately, one of the most glaring difficulties that Takahata faced when drafting up ways to adapt the manga was finding a way that it could reach feature length, as the original book included only the episodic stories that would become the flashback sequences of 10-year-old Taiko in the film. After much brainstorming, Takahata found a way to solve this issue by implementing a new framing narrative of the present version of Taiko who reflects on the now-past memories outlined in the manga. During production, Miyazaki didn't touch the script or the storyboards, putting full faith in Takahata's ability to do the adaptation justice. However, as producer, one of his jobs was managing the schedule and keeping progress on time, which caused some friction between the two as Takahata would stay relatively lax in meeting those deadlines and would often have trouble staying on time and budget, at one point being six months behind the initial end-of-1990 due date that caused it to be pushed to a summer 1991 release. Though, perhaps it was this additional time and resources that enabled the full vision of this project to be realized. For instance, while the flashback sequences of young Taiko were animated in traditional fashion by recording dialogue after the animation was completed along with a watercolor aesthetic to give the scenes the essence of memory, the present sequences were given a much greater emphasis on realism. One of the ways this was done was by recording dialogue first and capturing live-action performances of the scenes to study realistic movements, causing the scenes in 1982 to feature more realistic facial muscles and expressions. With much of the present story taking place in the countryside in Yamagata Prefecture, Takahata wanted an accurate depiction of the landscape and scenery that could feel real to the viewer. To do so, he went on a trip with allowing them to feel what safflower farming is like. For the coloring of the flowers themselves, color designer Mishio Yasuda would remark how she's never seen a director so picky on the colors for anime, saying she quite enjoyed working with him. The prominent use of different tones to communicate depth, airbrushing to mimic the morning mist, and 450 colors along with the color department taking about a year to hone the perfect shade of red to capture the colors during the summer resulted in depictions very true to form. When the drawings were shown to Mr. Inoue, he would say while grinning how well captured are the flowers and the happiness they bring were, that they'd captured his heart very well. This sense of realism was what Takahata was known for when approaching animation, explaining how live-action films are so common these days that they're becoming a part of reality. I don't think audiences really watch live-action features carefully. However, they'd be forced to for an anime feature because anime captures things we do and reflects more solid reality than how they actually are, and it makes people realize what we do every day. I believe anime can provide such opportunities. When the film was finally released on July 20th, 1991, it became a surprise box office success and attracted a large adult audience that helped it become the highest grossing Japanese film of 1991 in the country. Many years later, to celebrate the 25th anniversary of the film, GKIDS would release it for the first time with English dub on February 26th, 2016, featuring the voices of Daisy Ridley as Taiko and Dev Patel as Toshio. Yet, even finding financial success in Japan and even internationally, Only Yesterday isn't really held in conversation with Ghibli's other popular films like Spirited Away, Grave of the Fireflies, Princess Mononoke, Howl's Moving Castle, The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, and My Neighbor Totoro. A shame because I think it does a lot of things fantastically that make it not only stand out but a phenomenal movie that is on par with if not better than these entries. As probably strongly alluded to by my recounting of the creation of the film, one of the things that Only Yesterday does that I didn't see in any other Ghibli film when I went through all of them is the strong sense of realism specifically seen in the present storyline in 1982. While Ghibli movies definitely have no problem facing mature themes and topics head-on, none of their other films really went for this kind of style, cheekbones and all. Having seen a variety of responses from people who have watched the film, I know some view the realism in these present sequences to be kind of weird looking or even a little creepy due to the ways it differs from Ghibli's typical, more cartoonish style. However, especially when contrasted with the flashback scenes that do look like your typical Ghibli film, I can't help but find it really charming and in a way more down-to-earth, of course definitely furthered by the meticulously created environments compared to the watercolor of the past. It's in this way that I find this movie's style to be so compelling. With the present more realistic and down-to-earth, the recounts back to 1966 feel like they were actively being recreated in the mind of Taiko, capturing the main details of events but not completely filling everything in. Yet the realism of Only Yesterday isn't just found on the surface through its visuals. The way that it works as a character analysis of Taiko and the themes explored in that journey give a really nuanced and mature perspective on life. Early on in the film, we see through the flashbacks that Taiko has always wanted to explore the countryside but never really had the chance to. However, now older, she takes the time she has off of her office job not to go on a typical relaxing vacation but instead walk in the countryside with relatives that fulfills this childhood dream, perhaps being the catalyst for all of these memories to begin flooding back. Once they do and the film begins weaving the continuous present storyline with the episodic glances into the past, we see memories of being disappointed by the taste of a pineapple, feeling anxious excitement from her first childhood crush, being scolded for being a picky eater by her parents, struggling at math, particularly fractions, and her family seeing her fall behind, being slapped by her father, feeling embarrassment during the onset of puberty, complaining about not being able to get a new purse, and being scouted for an acting opportunity after pulling her heart into a small role in the school play before her father made her turn it down. While many of these memories hold a lot of negative connotations save particularly the childhood crush, Taiko doesn't look at them for those elements. As Taiko works more on the countryside and begins forming a closer bond with Toshio as she tells him more stories from her past, she doesn't do so so he can feel sorry for her or give his pity, she instead presents them as they are, unchangeable moments that, regardless of their nature, shaped who she has become today. For most of the film Taiko grins and stays a sort of nostalgic content when remembering these things not because she necessarily enjoyed the hardships of her past but instead because she can look at them now and appreciate that time spent and use it to better understand the horror of herself. She demonstrates this well when describing to Toshio how she always had difficulty dividing fractions, that just didn't make any sense to her. Instead of trying to paint a sort of sob story about how she always felt behind the crowd and how her family was disappointed by her performance, she tells him how she always thought people who understood that kind of stuff just had life all figured out, something she still hasn't quite felt she's been able to do. It's this that makes her view into the past so interesting to me. Taiko doesn't see her memories at face value for their evils but doesn't paint her life as only sunshine and rainbows either. It's just that those things have influenced who she has become today and seeks to look for an understanding in those memories to discover a way to address her present issues that came as a result of those moments to find the life that will give her the fulfillment and belonging she yearns for. This sort of inward analysis reaches its climax when, on the night before Taiko is set to get back on the train to Tokyo, Toshio's grandmother asks Taiko if she's enjoying it there, to which he responds yes. When she pushes further and asks Taiko if she could imagine herself living there, she responds how she supposes that she could. With these answers, Toshio's grandmother suggests that she marry Toshio and stay in the countryside because of how much she enjoys it there and the family enjoys her presence. However, it's now this sudden need to make a big decision about the future of her life that Taiko begins to falter and runs away aimlessly as she begins seeing herself as a fraud, just a child playing pretend who doesn't really know what it's like to be a farmer and what it's like to undergo the related hardships. While throughout the entire film she's spent plenty of time wondering about who she really is by looking at her past, being confronted with needing to make the associated large, life-changing decision becomes too much for her once it leaps away from abstraction. She laments about how she has gone on and on about how pleasant it is in the countryside when really all she is is a visitor. Concerned and unaware of what Granny had said, Toshio finds Taiko by the bridge and picks her up in his car when she asks him not to drive back and instead just drives somewhere. This scene reveals a lot of Taiko's inner guilt through the last memory she describes of an exchange student Abe who was poor and not well regarded by any of her classmates. She recounts how on his last day before leaving he shook everybody's hand but when it was his turn to shake her hand last he openly refused to. As they drive, Taiko tells Toshio how she disliked him the most and he must have simply seen through her, even though she had previously said how she refused to talk behind his back while her classmates did. After a silence, Toshio responds saying that maybe he just hadn't shaken her hand because he liked her and didn't want to say goodbye, which she responds surprised and reaffirms that she was the only one that he didn't shake the hand of and that he acted nicer to those he liked. She ends by describing how she remembers coming across him after he had left and mimicking his behavior, though by then she said it was too late. This whole final story acts as an analogy for how Taiko feels in this stressful situation. She'd never been a farmer before just as she hadn't been openly nice to Abe and by the time she had mimicked him, in this case what she considers mimicking a farmer, it's too late for her to change what had passed. As for Toshio's theory that Abe simply didn't want to say goodbye to her because he liked her, it communicated how Toshio liked Taiko and didn't wish to see her go just as Abe might have, furthered by Taiko's inner thoughts saying how she really wanted to shake Toshio's hand. Yet when she begins to head off back to Tokyo, the past version of herself surrounded by her classmates tugs at her to go back to Toshio and not allow Taiko to feel like this time she had acted too late, giving us the beauty that is this film's ending of Taiko and Toshio meeting back together as Taiko's past self and classmates cheer them on to signify how she's finally found her fulfillment and belonging. Ultimately, this is all to say that I really love this movie. I mean even the quiet nature of the film that doesn't really jump out at you does a fantastic job at allowing the viewer to engage in the meditative experience that is this narrative and encourage deeper connection and thought. It's for all that I've described and more such as the simply wonderful and relaxing soundtrack that this movie is my favorite of all time and one that doesn't get enough recognition for its nuanced and compelling narrative and themes. It really is, at least to me, a meditative masterpiece. And with all of that, that has been my discussion and analysis of Only Yesterday. While these are my opinions, I'd love to hear what you guys think of this film or any of the thoughts I've given. If you found this interesting, make sure to come back soon for more videos or browse through existing ones on the channel. Thank you so much for watching and I hope you all have a great day.