Gorgeous’ dad is getting remarried. Her mother died eight years ago, and she thinks her dad is making a mistake. So, she writes a letter to her aunt, asking if she and her friends can visit. When her aunt agrees, Gorgeous and the rest of the gang — Fantasy, Prof, Kung Fu, Melody, Sweet, and Mac — head into the countryside. Oh, and Gorgeous’s cat, Snowflake, also tags along.
How were they to know that this would be their last summer together?
The film is a meditation on the atomic bomb — director Nobuhiko Obayashi lost all of his friends to the bomb, and the movie is his way of processing the absurdity of their deaths.
The effects are rapid-fire, blending stop-motion, animation, in-camera, and blue-screen effects in a cacophonous whirl of storytelling.
I don’t like the fat-shaming of Mac, but I’m not letting that affect my score.
When I first saw this movie years ago, it was the first live-action Japanese film I had seen, so I kind of assumed they were all this whacky and inventive. Coming back to it now, I can genuinely appreciate how singular an experience it is.
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