Only Yesterday

So, going back to my Studio Ghibli movie reviews, we have another one of theirs that's super realistic like a few of their others and one that's honestly super relatable to myself personally, Only Yesterday. I mentioned in my Grave Of The Fireflies review that that film was super realistic and didn't have kind supernatural elements to it at all. Actually, both this and Grave Of The Fireflies were directed by the same person, so I guess you could almost say he's really into telling very realistic stories that're just about life and things like that. This is also another movie that wasn't dubbed by Disney, it was dubbed by another studio. I heard about how it was because the characters talk about some very inappropriate stuff, or at least some stuff that isn't really geared towards kids. At first, I thought that was kinda weird, but, when I saw the film itself and saw just how much they talk about it, I understood because, yeah, there's definitely some stuff talked about here that's not really for kids. But, with that said, this is still a really, really good film. I wouldn't really say it's one of my favourite Ghibli movies, but it's still really good and another one that I'm impressed had my attention as much as it did. The story is about a girl named Taeko and she's visiting the countryside and she's remembering her childhood along the way. So, the whole movie is going back and forth from her childhood and present day so we see how her life has been so far, and that's really it, but, like a lot of other Ghibli movies, they manage to make it super enjoyable and captivating. There's a lot of different things this movie plays with like family, getting older, knowing how to handle your mentality when you're beginning to change and a whole bunch of things like that. It also has some pretty different ways of showing a lot of these events. Mostly due to the animation, which looks really different in this movie. While it does have incredible animation like every Ghibli movie, it looks fairly different here because a lot of the movie has a kinda merky look to the backgrounds and the designs of the characters almost kinda looks like something a child would draw. I don't know if that was the intention, but, a lot of the time when Taeko is remembering about her childhood and remembering what things were like in the past, the characters almost kinda look like strange shapes. I don't really know how to explain that really well, but that's what I get when I look at the character designs. Plus, like a lot of the other Ghibli movies, this film is extremely slow and so you get to see Taeko as a child begin to have a different kinda mentality because she's experiencing different things and she's getting older and you can understand why she's like this. This is what kids are like when they begin to change and this film reflects that really well. This is what I meant when I said this film is really relatable. There's a lot of scenes in this where Taeko is going through something and it's hard for her to process it and so there's a lot that I took away from this film personally. It's also a film that really knows how to tug at your heart, especially anything involving her and her family because nothing really emotionally devastating happens, but the relationship they all have and how some people in the family act is pretty emotional. You could almost see some of the characters as hateable, especially Taeko's dad, who's a huge stick in the mud and some of the things he says, but they do it in a way where you don't really like him, but there's something about the family dynamic that's strangely endearing.  But I also like all the stuff that happens to Taeko in the present too because she's reminiscing while working on this farm with friends of her's and it's really sweet. And, it is just nice to see her be able to just do what she's doing while these memories are playing for us. I also like how we not only start to watch Taeko in the past begin to change as the film is going, but the one in the present begins to too because the people she's with begin to try to encourage her to stay and she considers it. And the actual ending when she's talking to that guy about someone she knew in her childhood is also pretty sad too. But I like how the ending is done too because she begins to go home but then she decides to stay and the way they visually show her doing that is really nice because she imagines herself as a child and the other kids she knew in school helping her too and I think that's a clever way to show that because you could see it as like both Taeko's growing up in some way and knowing how to make these decisions. But even if you don't see it that way, it's still done really well. And, I only mentioned this a small bit, but the animation really is phenomenal with doing a lot of great things. And the dubbing is just as great as it always is. I was really surprised to see Daisy Ridley in this. I've only ever known her as Rey in Star Wars, so it was nice to see her in something else and have it be a voice acting job, and she's fantastic as the older Taeko, and Alison Fernandez does a great job as the younger version of her. So, yeah, while I don't think this is a film that would appeal to everyone, especially not to every age, I think this is a great movie for older people like older teenagers and people like that and you could see this as a different kind of coming of age movie. So, either way, I do think you should check this out. So, that's my review for Only Yesterday. Thank you all for reading and please comment down below to tell me what you think.