My Impressions of Hinokio

(Image used from: http://asianwiki.com/Hinokio:_Inter_Galactic_Love)

I recently watched a Japanese movie called Hinokio. It's relatively an old movie as it was released in 2005. It has a number of child actors that are now stars in the present. The movie stars Masatoshi Nakamura, Kanata Hongo, Mikako Tabe, Maki Horikita, and Ryoko Kobayashi. Excluding Masatoshi Nakamura, these are one of the first movies for the young actors and it's great to see them in something at the start of their acting career in my opinion. You can see them develop as actors compared to the movies and dramas that they star in now. Overall, I enjoyed it as it is a heartwarming, emotional, funny, cute, and a tearjerker of a movie. 

The story is about loss, friendship, family, youth, and love. From the tagline for the movie is Inter Galactic Love, you can probably assume it has a sci-fi concept of some sort. Contrary to what some movies portraying robots as evil (ex. Terminator franchise), in this movie, robots are design to help with nursing for example. For this particular case, it is used to substitute for a student that is unable to go to school as a way to still interact with the outside world as the individual recovers in the mean time. There's no artificial intelligence or anything as the robot is manually controlled by the user. The main character, Satoru Iwamoto (Kanata Hongo) was in an accident that resulted him in being in a wheelchair as well as losing his mother. He shuts himself away from the outside world including his father, unable to move forward in his life. His father works for a computer software company called Overlord Electronics that makes these remote-controlled robots where he gives one to his son as a way to try to interact with society in order for him to get better. His new classmates surprisingly accept him and gives the robot a nickname, which is the title of the movie. It's a play on words from Hinoki (a piece of its parts is made from Hinoki wood) and Pinocchio. Then he befriends one of the classmates, Jun Kudo (Mikako Tabe), and the school year begins. I won't say anything more to not spoil any more of the plot.

For a youth movie that takes place probably in the last year of elementary school, it has some heavy themes going on like loss, and tragedy. I wasn't expecting that going in prior to watching the movie. During the movie, a lot of the emotional scenes loses the human impact since Hinokio is there instead of Satoru. It's not a bad thing, but it proves a point that making human connections are really valuable. Even if the robot is being used for rehabilitation, you can't substitute pieces of metal for a real person. For example, going on a date, falling in love, and experiencing new areas with your own eyes. There is only so much looking through a screen can emulate, and the people around you can only tolerate before wanting to find out about the real you. That really struck me after watching it two times. The father wanted to help his son get better by giving him a robot for him to use in the outside world, but looking at it from another perspective, wouldn't that push Satoru to not have the encouragement of stepping outside? It allows Satoru to continue to run away and not face his problems head on to try to come up with a solution. There is also the idea that the father is also running away from the problem by only interacting with his son through the eyes of a robot.

I'll accept the CGI for what it is as the movie was released in 2005. It probably didn't have a huge budget compared to a summer blockbuster movie. Japanese movies typically have lower quality for its visual effects compared to Western movies in general. It's not bad for the movie, but you can tell the difference between what is real and what is CG. I'm curious on whether Hinokio was completely in CG, or did the production team make a replica to be used in set for some scenes. The movie had bits of a video game tied with the story, and how it's connected to the real world in some capacity. Those were interesting to watch as I think it shows how much detail the writers put into this world that they created.

I felt that the music was subtle in the movie, providing just enough atmosphere for the scenes. I like the insert songs that they chose especially the ending. It's interesting that during the movie, the director used English songs to play over some scenes and it made me wonder whether Japanese viewers understood the lyrics of those songs. I know that Japanese citizens learn English in their education system, but I don't think many of them remember or apply that in their everyday lives. 

Concluding, this movie was good. I enjoyed it from beginning to end. Honestly, I only heard of the movie because of the child actors (Kanata, Mikako, Maki, and Ryoko). I don't regret watching this as it is nice to see them so young at the start of their career.