Anime: Hoohokekyo Tonari no Yamada-kun

My Neighbors the Yamadas is, without a doubt, a movie worth seeing. The movie is more often then not absolutely hilarious, and there are many almost unfathomably wise moments concerning family life. The movie is essentially split up into a series of at least two dozen (I lost a count) self contained vignettes that are almost always funny, and often side-splitting.

The animation’s style, while initially somewhat jarring, soon becomes one of the better parts of the show. In an age where many animes look pretty much the same, Yamadas is a breath of fresh air. At first the movie appears to be merely cutting corners in a “creative” way (ala GAINAX), but one will quickly notice the wonderful attention to detail and tremendously appealing visual humor that Ghibli is known for. As far as animation goes, the crown jewel of the movie is a sequence occurs near the beginning, where a newly married couple boldly sets off on their new life in one of the longest (and best) extended metaphors that I have witnessed. Music is somewhat lacking (generally weak classical music, silence, or goofy crap that no one can really enjoy too much), but voice acting is definitely serviceable.

The biggest weakness, I think, is actually the chosen medium itself. While each of the extremely short vignettes (which often have only one main punch line) is excellent, by the time the movie has finished, they have grown more than a little tiresome. In reality, no matter how great these sequences are, stringing them all together into a movie is definitely a bit trying on one’s patience. I much prefer the approach taken by Azumanga Daioh (a very similar show in terms of structure and origin), which put its stories into much more manageable groups of four.

Fortunately, the characters go a long way towards relieving the tedium that results from the length and story structure. Funny, lovingly developed and fairly believable, I enjoyed every character in the anime thoroughly. Although some of the main characters’ attributes are obviously exaggerations and could never actually happen in real life, at the same time they definitely mirror parts of human nature that feel very authentic.

Overall, My Neighbors the Yamadas is a film that I could recommend to just about every fan of Ghibli… but I probably wouldn’t show it to a person unfamiliar with anime. While the quality of the humor definitely makes up for its shortcomings, a layman probably won’t enjoy the decidedly Japanese humor as much as I did (see average animenfo score for more information).

Respect, Ghibli!
You have to have faith in yourself to come up with such an extraordinary technique. It's quite trivial and you can't tell it's anime if you just watch a few seconds. The movie is 100% digital - no hand-painted cels have been used. The director, Isao Takahata (e.g. Grave of the Fireflies), wanted to achieve a watercolor-picture effect, therefore it had to be created digitally. I think Takahata has been satisfied with the result. The style is simple, things in the background are mostly not more than schemes. But the rest got a really lovely look and the animations are very fine. After some minutes I began to like the style. But having to be at least a bit objective, I can't rate as high as I would want to. Not everyone will like this uncommon style (that goes for every style, of course), and the lack of details in many scenes, which is part of the style, doesn't help raising the rating.
But as I'm somewhat amazed and would like to see more works using it, I can't go below 7.

There is, also relatively, only few music. But what's there, mostly nice instrumental music, fits the charm and feeling of the Yamadas. Probably the intention of using music very carefully is to not distract the viewers from the many conversations. In the end you even get to hear the japanese version of "Que Sera Sera".
Effects and voice acting are good. The voices do fit the characters and are able to amplify the "feel-good-effect".

The Yamadas consists of short episodes about the daily life of the family. It covers a whole palette of scenarios, from losing a child in the mall (or losing a whole family ;)) over the relationship between father and son to the imposition of delivering a speech at a wedding. Those episodes are interesting and always mixed with a good portion humor. And you can't lose the feeling every single ep wants to deliver a message, because it handles things most people will go through one day.

The only characters really worth mentioning are, of course, the 5 family members (well, 6 if you count the dog). Grandmother, mother, father and son are quite colourful, but I got the feeling the daughter came short, though she's kind of the protagonist in one of the first "stories". Because of the episode-system it's hard to realize development, but I think at least father and son got some.

Watch it. Burn it. Watch it again some time. This is something you could watch quite often. And it also got "real" value, handling daily-life-situations. Last but not least, its animation is a great piece of art, though some people might not agree with me.

I didn't have high expectations for the Yamadas. Frankly because I wasn't sure about the animation myself. So I was gladly surprised how much I enjoyed this. It got this comforting feeling about it, you can just relax and smile about the incidents the family witnesses. If something fits the genre "family", I think this is it.
If you want action, the Yamadas isn't for you. There is a short action scene, but it still isn't action you normally see. But if you can enjoy slow shows with a little more conversation than usual, you will probably enjoy the Yamadas as much as I did.