My Review of "Pom Poko"

Pom Poko is a Japanese animated movie that came out in 1994. It's got a ton of social commentary behind it and quite weird as well. I think you'll get an extra appreciation for it if you understand a little bit more about Japanese culture. There are a lot of cultural aspects behind this movie that I kind of understood and learned about at the same time.

This movie starts off with the understanding of who the racoons are in this world. There are quite a number of racoons in this movie but the narrator seems to be the main character telling you the story. It begins with explaining the history of the racoons in the forest. They are fun loving creatures though some of them have the mystical ability to transform into anything they want.

Over time these raccoons have been living somewhat in tribes and eventually got into fights with one another. That is until they finally discover the true villain, humans. The humans are populating like crazy and don't really have the resources to stay in their own spot. As a consequence, they have to build yet another community where the raccoons live. The raccoons realize that they're going to be kicked out of their own habitat if they don't fight back.

Of the raccoons that can transform, they train themselves over the years to perfect their craft. The whole community is getting together to help fight the good fight. Eventually we have some interesting takes on how they combat the humans without being extremely violent. Though there are some raccoons that want to go the violent direction.

We have some interesting situations where it talks about how this is kind of history repeating itself. The raccoons once again have to pretend to be spirits to scare the humans away. Unfortunately for them, this is a different time. Humans are now disillusioned and are desperate to live themselves. They don't really have any choice in the matter but to live in this village.

This movie then continues to escalate in the methods in which the raccoons will take to get rid of the humans. It's a pretty fun premise and I can see how people can be very entertained by this. I unfortunately found the pacing quite boring. This might be because of my desensitization of today's loud and fast media.

I really wanted to like this because the characters are nice and fun but I couldn't keep up with the slow pace of this movie. There was also a lot of nonsensical situations that happened that I just couldn't put logic to. I believe a lot of it is lost in cultural translation. There may very well be a ton of things I don't understand about Japanese culture that I needed before going into this movie. To be fair, there was a lot that I learned as well and I did appreciate those nuggets of knowledge.

Just when I thought this was going to be a perfect family movie, I also have to give families a word of warning. There are a lot of animated male genitalia in this movie. This is at times a talked about transformation thing. I'm sure this is perfectly normal for their culture but in North America it is very weird. It's odd what they do with the character designs of this show. Some of them are wearing clothing but then they aren't. Again this could be a lost in translation thing. It took me out of the movie.

Overall, I can see some people overlooking those weird things and really enjoying this but I couldn't. I really couldn't get into this movie but did find some elements of fun in it. Still I can't watch this movie again and I definitely won't be recommending it to others. This movie is going to get a 4 out of 10 for me.