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Konnichiwa! I am your host Mayu for 2AM OTTACK! In this podcast, we talk a lot about anime,
manga, movies, music, and history through our distinct perspectives as a born and raised
Japanese non-otaku. That's me, and an American anime fan.
That's me.
We are back!
Finally.
Finally. It was a long trip in Japan.
A longer trip than expected, thanks to the typhoon.
Yeah, there was a typhoon, number 7? That's how you say it?
We got affected by this typhoon, which hit Tokyo, Chiba area, and our flight and other
flights at Narita and Haneda got cancelled.
We tried to get the tickets as fast as we can, but the reasonable ones and the earliest one
was like a week later from our scheduled flight, so we had to wait for another week in Japan.
Which is not the worst thing ever, but it was more stressful than I would have liked.
And before that, we did an awesome road trip in Japan.
Yeah.
We sure did.
We want to talk about it at some point, about our trip.
It was a week trip, plus like one week in Tokyo, suburb Tokyo, which we had never been before.
Yeah.
Yeah, which was interesting.
Today, we're going to go back to our routine, talking about anime and manga.
But first, Cisco, how many ko-onis do you think you release every day?
Ooh, that's a good question.
Um, I don't think I release that many.
I tend to say what's on my mind most of the time.
I pride myself on being a decent communicator, so there are times when I have to bite my tongue
and like not say what I'm really thinking, but not that many.
So let's go with like three.
I probably release three mini-onis a day.
So, Cisco, what we are going to talk about today?
We're talking about the film My Oni Girl, which is a 2024 anime fantasy film produced
by Studio Colorido and Twin Engine, directed by Tomotaka Shibayama.
The film was released simultaneously in Japanese theaters and on Netflix globally
on May 24th of this year.
The English title is very simple, My Oni Girl, but the Japanese title is
好きでも嫌いな天の弱
And I think we're going to talk about it at the end of this episode.
But for now, could you explain what this movie is about?
Sure.
So the film opens with a boy who has trouble saying no to people, especially people in need.
It seems a little bit like he's not exactly bullied, but doesn't have any really close
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friends, but has a lot of people who take advantage of him.
And he encounters a girl on a bus who doesn't have the right bus fare and offers to help
her and then gets kind of swept up in her attempt to reach a shrine.
He also finds out that she's an oni who has come from the hidden village of Oni and is
trying to find her mother.
And he tries to help her in her journey to find her mom.
And the plot kind of takes off from there.
What was your thought about My Oni Girl?
So one of the thoughts that I had all the way through the movie was how much this film
owes to all of the Studio Ghibli movies.
It's definitely drawing on influences from Spirited Away, especially, but also other
Studio Ghibli films in general.
And that's not a bad thing.
Studio Ghibli movies are great.
And this movie, I think, succeeds in being what it wants to be.
And it doesn't feel like a ripoff.
It's not like a straight take on anything.
But you just really feel the presence of Ghibli movies in watching this.
And I wouldn't put it on exactly the same level.
It's not as good as a Ghibli movie, but it also isn't a bad movie for not being a masterpiece.
It's a good movie.
And I liked it.
Yeah.
I'm not sure if you read this, but about Studio, they made A Whisker Away, Drifting Home,
which is available on Netflix.
And the director, Motaka Shibayama, also directed A Whisker Away.
Besides this, My Oni Girl.
He used to work at Ghibli.
Oh, okay.
Well, that explains a lot, honestly.
He also participated in working on Spirited Away.
Okay, cool.
So maybe there are some of the things in there are his original ideas that he just brought
to both movies.
Yeah.
And he used, as far as I know, two voice actors from Ghibli movies.
Do you recognize any of them?
No.
I don't want to spoil too much, but The Mother of Tsumugi is by Noriko Hidaka, who is a really
famous voice actor.
She did, like, Touch, Minami Asakura, or Nadia, or Ranma 1 Nibun no Ichi?
Ranma?
Who is she in Ranma?
I don't know.
But she did One Piece.
She was in it somewhere.
Okay.
I mean, she's in, like, every, like, famous ones.
And she did the voice for Satsuki from My Neighbor Totoro.
Oh, okay, okay.
Wow.
Also, Hisako Kyoda, who did the voice for Gozen, like a grandma in My Onigirl.
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She did the voice for Obaba from Nausicaä of the Valley of the Wind.
Yeah.
So two voice actors, as far as I know, who were involved in a Ghibli movie, did the work
in My Onigirl.
Got it.
Well, that explains some of the similarities, for sure, then.
Yeah, especially the, like, the snow god.
As soon as you see the snow god, it's like, oh, looks kind of familiar.
Very, yeah.
I mean, I think, I know we're not talking about Drifting Home today, but having also
seen that film, that movie doesn't feel like it owes quite as much to the Ghibli canon.
Like, a little bit.
Like, if you, like, push yourself to see some influences, I think you can.
But that one felt a little bit more like it was on its own with what it was trying
to do.
And it's got some fantasy elements and stuff in it.
But this one felt more similar to a Ghibli movie.
And again, like, not in a bad way, but in a way that felt like, you know, it's not
Miyazaki, but it's still pretty good.
I feel the same way for Aoisu Kawai, which I watched by myself and then didn't feel
like anything, like, reminds me of Ghibli or anything.
It was good.
But it's typically this one, My Only Girl, like, it reminded me of, like, boy-girls,
you know, flying together and that kind of stuff.
Yeah, that shot in particular, yeah.
Yeah, I liked it.
There are, like, a lot of other reasons why I liked it, too.
First, I have to say, it's based on Yamagata, which is important for me.
And I'm not complaining about people not talking in dialect in this one.
Oh, good point.
Because Yonezawa is kind of a big city.
And in, like, Akita, too, in Akita City, like, a lot of young people and, like, middle-aged
people don't talk much about in dialect.
But in my hometown, which is, like, a really rural area, talking dialect all the time.
So I was okay with not, you know, people not talking dialect at all, kind of.
Some of the characters should at least have spoken a little bit in Yamagata dialect.
Yeah, maybe some people in Oni Village.
Yeah, the Oni Village should have been all Yamagata dialect, seriously.
Yeah.
They haven't left in a long time.
Right.
I guess we don't really get, like, the backstory of how all of them got there.
But still, yeah, I hear you on that.
I mean, I think it's, you know, they go through some rural areas.
They could have definitely made a nod towards actual Yamagata dialect if they wanted to,
and they did not.
Also, I like the idea of Oni Island is in Yamagata.
Because, like, if you say Oni Island, Onigashima, like, at least for me, I imagine somewhere,
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like, warm.
Warm?
Yeah, somewhere warm.
Somewhere, like, small island.
Like, actual island.
But, like, in the South Pacific?
Or, like, just, like, Okinawa region?
Really?
Yeah.
Why?
I don't know.
Momotaro is big in my head.
Is he in, like, a warm place?
And there's no snow.
Oh, there's no snow.
Okay.
Yeah.
I guess I see that.
For me, I think, you know, you say the word Oni, and my image of an Oni is a namahage.
So, to me, it made total sense that they lived somewhere cold, because I was like,
well, duh.
Like, that's where the namahage obviously live, too, and they're Oni.
So.
I don't really consider namahage equal Oni, for some reason.
Namahage is namahage itself.
It's, like, something different from Oni.
It's, like, another thing.
Huh.
Interesting.
Yeah.
I don't know.
Huh.
Well, you definitely have a better view on that than I do.
But, yeah, that's, uh, well, I don't know.
Maybe that's why I was so easily able to accept that they lived in, like,
a snowbound village.
Also, the reason why we decided to watch, I mean, we wanted to watch this, um, after it
came out, but we didn't have time because we were separated in Japan and in America,
and they didn't have enough time to watch.
But while we were doing the road trip from Akita through Yamagata, we went to Uriwari
Sekitei Park.
How do you say this word in English?
I think the word sekitei means quarry.
In the English title on Google Maps, at least, is Uriwari Sekitei Quarry.
Quarry.
That's right.
A quarry is a place where you remove stone to be used in other applications, like making
stone statues or stone foundations for houses or whatever.
Um, and I think this particular quarry was especially used for statue stone.
So it's a real place.
And it's, as we walked into it, um, there's a particular part of the quarry that's been
dug into at the bottom, into almost a three-sided room, like a mini cave.
And inside, there's a promotional poster for My Oni Girl.
We were like, what is this doing here?
Turns out Uriwari Sekitei is a location in the movie.
We did not pick it based on knowing that.
We just randomly found out by going there.
We all going there was kind of random too.
I think the only reason we went there was because we happened to pick an Airbnb for
which Uriwari Sekitei was the closest thing of interest.
And so it was, uh, it was very much just a random chance that brought us there.
And then here's this connection to a Netflix film, a Netflix anime film.
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So that place is pretty close to Miyagi, right?
Yeah, it's right across the border, basically.
So what did you think about the park?
So the park itself is really interesting.
Um, you can see a huge part of the hillside has been cut away and quarried for stone.
And it's not very regular.
It, I mean, I'm used to seeing quarries, for example, in the United States that have been
dug by giant machines that are really, really deep that often have a lake or a body of water
at the bottom.
Um, and this one is clearly made by hands.
Like it was a quarry in an era before machines.
And so some parts of it are cut away and then there's like some steps in some places, but
not others.
And there doesn't seem to be a lot of rhyme or reason to why they cut stone out of some
parts of it and not out of other parts.
But it's very pretty.
It's a great place for making like shouting things and getting echoes.
And, uh, there's even like a tunnel that goes through part of the hill to another portion
of the quarry.
That's kind of cool to walk through.
That's the entrance in the movie.
That's the entrance to the secret Oni village in the film.
Yeah.
Right.
And this place was in use from 1923 to 2010.
Like they were getting stone there that late?
But I thought they'd started using it way earlier.
No, they didn't start using this quarry until the 1920s.
Damn, I could have sworn I read at the site that it was in use like in like the, I don't
know, 900s or something.
I'll double check.
But wow, that's really impressive.
Seems like they, you know, you can rent a place out and have a concert.
Whoa.
Yeah.
Didn't you see the sign about like yagai ongaku blah blah blah?
I did not pay attention to that, but that's, it's got to be an amazing place with really
interesting acoustics.
And echo everywhere because it's like, you know, tall standing walls all around.
Yeah, I bet.
Yeah, that's the reason, one of the reasons why we decided to watch this time.
And then this place appears twice in the film.
Both times kind of near the end.
Yeah.
Yeah.
It's a kind of short, right?
I was like, oh, that's it?
Yeah, it's true.
It's not like a main location.
It's like a very brief thing.
Yeah, but it was still cool.
Like, you know, we visited, what do you call this?
Those things like anime seichi junrei or something.
I mean, I guess anime seichi means like anime holy sites.
Yeah.
I think they're just like places that inspired particular scenes in anime.
But yeah, we went to more than one on this trip, actually.
Should we talk about the other one?
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Let's keep it secret.
Okay, well, we'll get that.
We'll talk about that one next time.
Next time, because like, I want to talk about it more.
I want to take more time about it.
That's fair.
And then Hiei Shrine kept coming up in the story because it's an important place to go.
And I googled it.
And then it's called Yamadera Hiei Jinja is the official name.
And then I know Yamadera, but I have never been to Hiei Jinja.
Okay.
But I have been to Yamadera before.
Okay.
Which is like a walking distance from Hiei Jinja.
Wow.
Okay.
So you've been pretty close.
Yeah.
So Yamadera has a lot of different kind of shrines.
But if you go on top, there are like long steps, like more than thousand steps.
And you can go up to pretty much like on the cliff.
There's a little house kind of thing.
And you can look down and see the view of the town.
A thousand is a lot of steps, though.
I'm not sure I'm built for that anymore.
It was hard.
I went there.
I can't remember.
Like, I think it was still winter, like close to spring or winter.
There's still snows.
Like, I was so scared of like slipping.
It'd be a long staircase to fall down.
There's no doubt about it.
Yeah.
And I went there with my parents and I was still like pounding like...
Yeah.
Yeah.
But the view was really nice.
Cool.
Yeah, we should visit next time.
All right.
That's on.
I wanted to explain something about characters' names.
Especially if you watch this movie in English,
you can't really tell kanji of characters' names.
But if you know Japanese, you can see the kanji
and kind of figure out where the name comes from.
For example, the main character's name is Hiragi, the boy.
Hiragi is like a Christmas holly?
I mean, it's around at other times of the year, too.
But yeah, the holly tree is what his name means.
What's his name?
For English speakers, the word holly especially conjures the berries of the holly,
the red berries.
So you get the sense that he thrives in winter a little bit, which turns out to be true.
The time is set in summer in the movie,
but sometimes it snows in the middle of the summer for a reason.
Tsumugi?
So can you explain what Tsumugi means?
She's one of the main characters, too.
Yeah, so Tsumugi, as far as I understand it, is a type of cloth
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that's manufactured specifically in Yamagata.
It's a type of silk that's woven in a particular way in that region.
So you've got the one image of the holly berry, and on the other side,
you've got this particular type of woven silk cloth.
That's the other character's main name.
Other stuff I kind of liked about this movie is it might be a spoiler alert,
but I felt like this movie described a little bit about the struggle of working moms.
Yeah, because of...
Wait, which one?
Towards the very end.
Towards the end.
OK, got it.
Yeah, I don't want to spoil, but I was like, I don't know if I can say about myself,
I don't think I'm a working mom.
But it's not like I don't work.
I mean, I work all the time at home.
Yeah, well, it's a different experience from being a mom who works somewhere else
and isn't home a lot.
Right, but I could feel like when you have to, you know, go outside,
and then even though you have a child, you have to go outside,
and then go work, and then come home, and then it's a lot of work.
Yeah, it takes a real toll on people.
Let me explain about some voice cast.
Then Hiragi, main boy, is by Kensho Ono, who did the voice for Yuri from Spy Family.
And I think his most famous work is Harry Potter.
He was Harry Potter's voice in the Japanese dub?
For 10 years.
Wow, OK.
So probably he started, you know, when he was about Harry's age.
Interesting.
So he had like a boyish voice back then?
Yeah, I think so.
And he's married to Kana Hanazawa, who did the voice for Kanroji from Demon Slayer,
Mayuri Shina from Steins Gate, and Reiko from Dark Gathering.
Eiko.
Oh, sorry, Eiko.
That's OK.
Yeah, cool.
To me, like, Reiko sounds better.
It would fit better with the series theme for her to be Reiko, but she's just Eiko.
Yeah, she's not a ghost.
Yet.
Yet.
I haven't seen the rest of it, so it's not a spoiler, just a joke.
Theme song of this movie is by Zutto Mayonaka de Ii Noni.
Right.
Yeah.
I Wish It Was Midnight All The Time is the band's name.
And I was curious to know, like, how do they introduce themselves in English?
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And their name is Zutto Mayo.
Oh, OK.
That makes sense.
But that makes it sound like always mayonnaise.
Zutto Mayo, yeah.
Sounds like it, yeah.
OK.
So they are a Japanese rock group that debuted in 2018.
And they never released a full member list,
crediting different people for arrangements and music video production each time.
The only member regarding in all of the group's output is a vocalist and songwriter,
an unidentified woman named Akane.
Oh, OK.
Weird.
Zutto Mayo's song was also used in Drifting Away,
which I didn't realize when I watched it.
Drifting Home, you mean?
Uh, Drifting Home?
Yes, Drifting Home.
The other film by this director?
Yeah.
He used the same bands for both movies he directed.
I feel like that's not that unusual, you know?
Like, certain producers or directors will really be, like,
attached to a particular music group and use their work to kind of, like,
let that person or let that band, like, get some exposure.
I'm thinking of Furikuri's use of The Pillows, where, I don't know,
the director or somebody was just, like, really into this band.
It was like, all the music is going to be done by this band.
And then that's what they did.
And it brought the band a lot of fame.
So the music was pretty good, I think.
I liked this band even before I knew about this movie.
Yeah, I also enjoyed the themes in the film, especially at the end of the movie.
I thought, like, the closing credit music was really good.
And the music in the film also has that sort of Ghibli feel of, like,
the person is kind of going for, like, a Joe Hisaishi type of,
I don't know, feeling in the, like, orchestration and score.
Which, again, like, I think, like the rest of the film,
it's not exactly Ghibli, but it's still pretty good.
Yeah, I like both main characters.
And then I liked when, like, in the story,
they explain the reason why it's snow is to hide about Oni Village, Hidden Village.
Right.
Yeah, which I wish I kind of knew when I was living in a snowy place.
That that's why it had to snow so much?
Yeah.
Yeah, I feel like there could definitely be an Oni Village hidden near your, like, hometown.
That that seems like a possibility to me.
Yeah, a lot of nature and a long winter.
Okay, let's do word of the day.
Today's word of the day is...
Amanojaku.
Amanojaku is in the Japanese title, Suki Demo Kirai Na Amanojaku.
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We use the word Amanojaku in, like, a regular conversation in Japan.
Really?
I don't think anyone's ever used it with me.
Like, what's a context in which you would use it?
I mean, you are not Amanojaku, so...
Oh, so that's why no one's ever said it to me?
Yeah.
That's a good thing.
Oh, well, I'm glad to hear that.
Thank you.
Yeah, so to me, Amanojaku is a person who did or say something
opposite of the other person say or tell.
Like someone who's, like, intentionally just trying to be defiant or contrary?
Like a contrarian, I guess?
Yeah, yeah.
Okay.
Yeah.
Have you encountered anyone like an Amanojaku?
Yeah, absolutely.
No one's like, I'm not going to use any names or anything.
But yeah, I know people where if you say,
hey, I'd really like to, you know, do this,
then they immediately suggest doing the opposite.
Or if you're like, hey, do you want to get this to eat?
The person's like, no.
Like, I want to get the opposite.
Or just maybe not even I want to get anything.
Just everything you say, no.
Like that.
Are you talking about me?
I said I was going to use any names.
And no, no, I'm not.
I? Am I Amanojaku?
No, not most of the time.
You're not.
You're totally not.
Don't worry.
Sometimes I feel like I'm probably an Amanojaku to our kids.
Like whatever they say, I'm like, no, we're doing the opposite.
You know, hey, Dad, can I play video games?
No, you have to study.
Like that kind of thing, right?
Yeah.
After they are done with studying, you say like, actually, you have to.
You have to study more.
Yeah, that's they would probably call me an Amanojaku.
Yeah.
All right.
Anything else you would like to add about this movie?
I don't know.
I think it's hard to tell with Netflix because they never announce what the
watching numbers are for different films, like how well anything is doing on Netflix.
But I hope this movie did well.
Like I would, I, you know, Hayao Miyazaki is old and he keeps saying he's going to
retire and then he like doesn't actually retire.
He makes another movie, but at some point he's not going to live forever.
The man's mortal and we're going to need studios that put out really good
Ghibli-like movies in the future.
So I hope this one gets a little bit of traction because I think the director is
like a worthy guy and the story was cool.
And as much as there's part of me that's like, yeah, but it's not as good as a
Ghibli movie.
Like, I think I'm going to need to get over that attitude at some point.
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And I hope movies like this don't get, I don't know, ground down by people like
me being like, it could have been better.
Right.
I hope they like keep making these types of films so that even when Miyazaki's gone,
like some of them are still getting made.
Right.
Right.
Um, the other person, the other director I know from Ghibli is Anno.
What was his first name?
Hideaki Anno.
Hideaki Anno.
I mean, he worked at Ghibli, but I don't think of him as a director from Ghibli.
Right.
Right. He was like an animator there at some point in his life.
And then he like went on to, he mostly worked at Gainax.
Where he directed Evangelion, among other things.
Okay.
But, you know, he's from Ghibli and a lot of animators, like,
akogareru.
Look up to him.
Oh, yeah.
He's a genius.
Right.
And he's the main, he's the main character in The Wind Rises, right?
He does that voice, like, inexplicably.
Ah, Anno?
Yeah.
Yeah, yeah.
It's an interesting choice.
Yeah.
Very interesting.
Interesting choice.
Yeah.
Very weird.
But he's a great director, for sure.
Isn't it the voice acting?
I mean, he was fine in that movie.
It's not, I don't think his voice acting was like the problem in The Wind Rises.
So I'm not going to blame him for it.
But it was just, you know, he has a distinctive voice and it was an interesting choice for
the main character.
Yeah.
Yeah.
All right.
So hopefully soon we can talk more about anime and manga and also our trip in Japan,
which we were really busy driving around and visiting more places about anime.
Yeah.
Which I'm looking forward to talk about it.
Like, it shivered me a little bit.
Seriously.
Okay, cool.
Well, we'll include that in a future episode, I guess.
Thank you so much for listening to this week's episode.
Don't forget to subscribe and follow 2AM OTAK and 3AM OTAK on Spotify, Apple Podcasts,
Amazon Music, and YouTube.
It means so much to us and we'll keep making fun episodes.
See you next time for more 2AM OTAK.
Peace.
You
