Moribito — Review

I love Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit to pieces. It’s a type of anime I wish was more prevalent — a strong story-driven piece with a mature main character, a production that can call to a broader audience. There is something appealing about that. While I do admire the tone and animation of Moribito, I’m not so taken in by those charms to avoid feeling some mild disappointment when thinking about it as a whole.

For the good of his people, the Mikado of the New Yogo Empire has ordered the death of his youngest son, Chagum, who bears an egg inside him that when it hatches will bring upon a drought that will devastate the land. A fatal accident was arranged to occur over a bridge, but this was thwarted when a female spear for hire, Balsa, witnesses this “accident” and dives into the river to save the prince from drowning. Later that night she is summoned by the queen, who begs Balsa to protect her son from death to which Balsa agrees even though the task basically meant she would now be raising a child. Balsa has her own reasons, atonement for the lives she’s taken. So, in the dead of night, she and the prince escape and they begin their journey.

In a discussion provided on the dvds, director Kenji Kamiyama says the adaptation of the novel could be told in 13 to 15 episodes. However, it seems Moribito was slated for 26 episodes and rather than stretch the original story to fill 26 episodes, Kamiyama decided to leave the core story within those 15 episodes and add new material to get to 26 episodes. The structure sounds like a similar structure to what Kamiyama used in Ghost In The Shell: Stand Alone Complex (GitS) where there were “Stand Alone” episodes interspersed within the main story. The structure worked beautifully in GitS, but seemed less effective in Moribito. Moribito’s storyline is more straightforward than the one in GitS and gets derailed somewhat by the extra content. Much of the added material is actually great on its own, but when viewed as a whole it gets in the way of the core story. In part due to how long it feels like before returning to the story at some points. This forces an adjustment of expectations from what starts off as a tight adventure story to something much slower and meandering, before returning back to the tension of the main story.

Moribito also misplaces the visual highlight of the series in the beginning. The spear fight in the rice fields is a well choreographed fight which the climactic battle doesn’t come close to reaching. I can and have watched that rice field combat over a dozen times. There is also a duel, which has a great moment for Balsa that punctuates the difficulty of her personal oath and how it reveals the depth of her care for Chagum. Both of these climaxes are better than the third and final conflict. It’s more of an execution flaw than one of design or intent. The swarms of critters should have been tense and claustrophobic, just it wound up feeling like a bunch of people with pointed sticks standing around and poking at moving blobs.

The denouement was satisfying and it’s here where the slow segment of the show pays off. It’s not a shocking or surprising way to end. Thinking about it, the ending is the most obvious and natural one given the circumstances and the stations of those involved, but that’s pretty much how most of the show evolved. Moribito is thoughtful, grounded, and beautiful to watch.

Ultimately, I was hoping it would be something I could lend to friends who occasionally borrow anime like Berserk, Samurai Champloo, and Ghibli stuff. It’s not any show’s responsibility to become prime lending material, but I can see the decompressed plotting issues being a problem for strangers of anime to get over. Moribito just wasn’t good enough for that purpose, in spite of being very well done and well worth watching. Who probably enjoys this most are the initiated who need a break from sight gags, panties, and teenage angst.

Moribito’s Dub

Kristi Reed directed the English dub. As a BangZoom! dub production, the dub is conservative in its approach to localization, creating a functional English language version. Cindy Robinson voices Balsa, which tonally is a good representation of Balsa and the performance was good. Chagum is voiced by Mona Marshall who I’m kind of tired of hearing through no fault of her own. She always plays these young boy characters and I think she’s run out of ways to make them all distinct on the performance level. But whatever, she can do these roles in her sleep and she does the job well whenever she’s called to play these parts. I imagine she doesn’t even need a director as she can just walk in, think to herself, “I’ve played this character 133 times,” deliver her lines and leave. The tone between Balsa and Chagum is quite good.

I wasn’t much a fan of the English version of Madam Torogai. As a character, she’s nutty and way out there and Barbara Goodson takes her there. On the one hand, she breaks up the often dialed back dialog, but on the other it calls a lot of attention to itself as being somewhat out of step with everyone else. I think in English we have less tolerance for overdoing it than other languages. The rest of the cast delivers a decent approximation of their characters, though nobody feels solid and dead on.