Behind the Screen: Four Muted Environmental Pleas

Four Muted Environmental Pleas

Fly Peek! Peek the Baby Whale (1991)
Tottoi (1992)
The Sea of Ticonderoga (1990)
Coo of the Far Seas (1992)

All four of these works of anime have similar environmentally-themed premises with the innocent bond between children and animals taking centre-stage against the threat of heartless adults only concerned with profit.

Intriguingly, none of these works have been re-released on DVD (except for Fly Peek!, which had a very limited run) in spite of them boasting some impressive talent lineups: Fly Peek! Peek the Baby Whale (Tobe! Kujira no piiku) features a script by Keiko Nobumoto of Macross Plus and Cowboy Bebop fame, character designs and animation direction by Satoru Utsunomiya, a renowned master of fluid and natural movement, and is directed by Koji Morimoto – the avant-garde animator and Studio 4C headliner whose skills are showcased in such omnibus films as Robot Carnival, Memories, The Animatrix and Genius Party.

Meanwhile, Tottoi (Totoi) boasts the timely reunion between the inimitable character designer Haruhiko Mikimoto, and legendary Space Battleship Yamato director Noboru Ishiguro, working together again after years since Super Dimension Fortress Macross and Super Dimension Century Orguss.

Coo of the Far Seas (Tooi umi kara kita kuu) is based on the manga by acclaimed anime director Mahiro Maeda, which was in turn based on a Naoki Award-winning novel by Tamio Kageyama. The movie is helmed by veteran director Tetsuo Imasawa, who also directed many classics such as Candy Candy and both of the Tokyo Movie Shinsha iterations of Tetsujin 28-gou.

The Sea of Ticonderoga (Taikonderonga no iru umi), directed by Panda Z: The Robonimation and Elfen Lied’s Mamoru Kanbe, is also based on a book, although this one is actually a storybook for very young children.

Coo and Fly Peek have seen officially translated releases in select regions in the West, the rest, to the best of my knowledge, have not. The similarities in all four works go as far as to set all of the protagonist children as having experienced the loss of at least one parent, thus making it easier to form a bond with the creature. Invariably, the creature finds affinity with the child in the face of danger and they help each other out in times of need.

Tottoi and Fly Peek are set in Europe, the former featuring a baby seal and the latter a baby whale. In both works, the infant animal is discovered by a child and his younger companion (in Tottoi, it is the boy Tottoi’s female cousin, in Fly Peek it is Kai’s younger brother) in a remote enclave, to which they return regularly to provide feed and share some play time. Again, in both cases the discovery is kept a secret for a while until a certain chain of events leads to the secret being revealed to other children in the neighbourhood, who in turn go on to spread it to adults and thus trouble ensues.

In Fly Peek this leads to the capture of the baby whale by a “Sea Circus” owner, where the remainder of the story follows the attempts of the boy Kai to rescue the animal, thus making the film an animated mirror image of the Hollywood blockbuster Free Willy – even down to the climactic scene both movies share of a slow-motion shot of the whale victoriously leaping through the sky, over the wall representative of the final border between freedom and captivity, all the while dramatically clearing the body of the young boy who came to the rescue as water droplets glisten in the sunlight. Plagiarism would seem to be the first thing to come to the mind of the viewer, but in fact, both films were released in the same year.

The 30-minute short film, The Sea of Ticonderoga, meanwhile, is interesting due to its setting being a Japanese island where the fishermen are reporting that the water is turning white, and beginning to give off a rotten smell. It is eventually discovered that the plankton is dying and the food chain in the sea is gradually being contaminated. A strange series of events follows where a baby whale, through telepathy, calls out to a young boy named Akashi, grants him the power to breathe and talk underwater and they visit the whale’s dying mother whereupon she reveals that the ocean is being contaminated by something called “Ticonderoga”. She also asks Akashi to take one of her ribs. Things get even more surreal after something erupts from the depths and a giant jellyfish appears, telling Akashi and some of the other fish to get inside its body as they try to rush to the surface to outrun the giant explosion. Akashi is returned to the island where he makes a flute out of the whale bone to communicate with his marine friends. The viewer is clearly shown that the jellyfish is representative of a mushroom cloud and it is explained that Ticonderoga refers to the hydrogen bomb which in real life had been loaded onto a fighter jet that had accidentally fallen into the sea off Okinawa in the 1960s. In fact, Ticonderoga refers to the USS Ticonderoga aircraft carrier. The movie was made shortly after this information was de-classified in 1989, thus the motivation behind it was to spread knowledge that such a terrible thing ought never happen again – a point clearly (and somewhat jarringly heavy in contrast with the rest of the mood in the film) made with the appearance of a scrolling list of dates of nuclear tests and accidents that run after the credits wrap.

The dangers of atomic weapons are highlighted once more in Coo of the Far Seas (1993), the star of which is – the “wildest” of all the critters in these anime – a baby plesiosaur. Our hero Yousuke discovers this long-thought extinct creature on the beach on Pago Pago, the island he is living on with his father, a somewhat clumsy but kindhearted marine biologist. The island is located in the Fiji archipelago and run by a tribal chief, where dealing in community affairs must come only after participation in exotic rituals. They name it Coo and try to keep it hidden but inevitably the secret gets out and the chase is on. Aided by a beautiful military-trained photojournalist, the group tries to evade and counter-attack the siege by the French shadowy organization intent on capturing the creature for research while trying to continue their nuclear experiment campaign in the region.

Of all these works, Coo is the most entertaining, complex, well-researched in history and geography, as well as visually impressive in its attention to detail, often showing off some well-choreographed scenes, in particular the depiction of the undersea creatures’ movements and even the subtle ways that sunlight is shown reflecting off the surface of the water. At just short of two hours, it is also the longest, and its caveat is that perhaps the final act runs for a little too long, as Coo is held in captivity, but later freed, only to be replaced by Yousuke as a hostage.

These message-charged works serve to highlight the versatility of Japanese animation and its diversity not just in themes but also in terms of the talents of the staff involved. Many more exist; some receive cooperation from governmental and environmental agencies, and some are even selected and promoted by the Ministry of Education Science and Culture as educational materials. It is my hope that some of these will garner some attention even without a transition to DVD or a licensing deal in other territories.