Totto-Chan: The Little Girl at the Window is a visually beautiful and powerful depiction of war that shifts the perspective completely. Through the eyes of a child, audiences can experience what war time was like for young kids and how schools adjusted to the chaotic and brutal period. To celebrate its release at Scotland Loves Anime‘s inaugural London event, and the fact it won the Jury Award, we had the absolute pleasure of talking to director Shinnosuke Yakuwa (Doraemon) about his experience bringing the celebrated memoir by Tetsuko Kuroyanagi to the big screen.
A huge thanks to the wonderful folks at Anime Limited and Fetch for making this one happen. We hope you love it just as much as we did.
Previously, you have predominantly worked on the Doraemon franchise. How did this experience differ?
I feel like I had more freedom as a director making Totto-chan. With Doraemon, you have five unique children who are the main characters who are fixed – their characters are very much fixed, and the stories revolve around them, so there are set rules that you have to follow. With Totto-chan, it was up to me how to shape the individual personalities of the characters and how much of which traits to bring out, as I had more freedom in that sense. Because it’s a work of literature than a piece of pure entertainment, there was more room for detailed emotion, which I enjoyed.
As a director, what was it like handling the source material by Kuroyanagi which is very autobiographical, as opposed to fiction?
Well, when you’re working with non-fiction – with autobiography – you want to try not to change the facts of what actually happened. You can use dramatic license to rearrange them but not, from my point of view, to make it easier to understand, because the most meaningful thing about making an autobiography is that it’s real – it’s reality. For me, that means something is a bit harder to understand or lacking in dramatic plot twists, then that’s not a problem for me.
What was it about Totto-chan and Kuroyanagi’s story that excited you as a director?
When I first read the book, the scene where Totto and Yasuaki climb the tree really stood out to me and stood in my mind – I really wanted to animate that scene. Thinking about it, I think it was because that the most beautiful scene in the book for the children, I feel. That’s where they learn to trust each other and make the impossible possible. That trust and understanding that they have is really beautiful, and I thought that if I might show that, it might prompt the audience to think a bit about mutual understanding.
The art style is absolutely gorgeous – so vibrant and unique, especially the contrast with Totto-chan’s imagination and the more realistic world. Can you tell me how you developed that at Shin-Ei Animation?
For the majority of the film, I always think if you’re making animation, I prefer a painterly style over a photorealistic style. I like the blanks – the white spaces that you get with watercolours. I feel that paintings are basically… the layout as if you’re using a telephoto lens and then focusing in on the detail, and the part that’s important, and that’s what I wanted to replicate with the layout of this film.
For the fantasy scenes, they relied on the talents of the different animators working on them. The first one was a young animator at Shin-Ei Animation called Kanbei Yuta. There’s a lot of movement in that scene, so he had to thousands of these crayon drawings, which is a lot of work, but he made that work. The second one was Kunio Kato, a famous animator, who made these almost moving watercolours with that sense of transparency to them. The last one was Setsuka Kawahara, an animator who works with paper cutouts, she made the arms, legs and bodies to move like marionettes. Having read Uncle Tom’s Cabin [which inspires one of Totto-chan’s dreams in the film] before having created that scene. So, I think having these scenes made them really stand out from the rest of the film, and I think, really helped contribute to it [the film] having gone down so well in Europe. There’s been a real appreciation for the style of animation.
How do you feel about audiences around the world experiencing Totto-chan, and I was wondering what you hope people take away from the story?
To have people around the world watching this film is an honour, and a miracle. I hope people feel the tragedy of war and even moreso, I hope that it makes them a little bit more considerate of people around them who may be different from themselves.
Synopsis:
In Tokyo, just before World War II, there is a school that combines learning with fun, freedom, and love. This unusual school has old railroad cars for classrooms, and it is run by an extraordinary man-its founder and headmaster, Sosaku Kobayashi who is a firm believer in freedom of expression and activity. Here arrives Totto-chan, a lively little girl who doesn’t fit in at her original elementary school. Thanks to headmaster Sosaku, Totto-chan will meet unique students and learn new things, even when Japan descends into war.
Check out the trailer below:
Don’t forget, you can check out more anime goodness right here.
