Tales from Earthsea

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Ghibli Reviews

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This seems to be the title that reaches the very bottom on any sort of Top Ghibli film list. And I have to admit, though I really didn't dislike this title all that much, I can see where people are coming from. The overall execution of things here is somewhat confusing and lacking in some explanation. It's another one of those Ghibli films where the animation is the big star, because that part of it is pretty damned amazing.

The film opens up as we see some sailors witnessing the strange occurrence of two dragons fighting each other. This basically translates to something being terribly wrong in the world, and things are clashing. We learn that mankind has taken to the Earth and water, prizing their possessions, where the dragons find freedom with the elements of fire and air. The separation of dragons and men seem to be what is putting the world off-balance.

In what is probably the single most unexplained and random scene of any Ghibli movie, the young Prince Arren (Junichi Okada/Matt Levin) fatally stabs his father, the King of Elad, and flees with his sword. It's even revisited later on, but even he can only say "I dunno why I did that". We do get that he has an incredibly bad temper, however, so maybe the King just wanted him to tidy up his room when he didn't want to or something.

Anyway, Arren finds himself on the run, and he runs into the Archmage Sparrowhawk (Bunta Sugawara/Timothy Dalton). Together, they set out on a seemingly random journey to try to find out what's going on in the world. We soon learn that a lot of the trouble is being caused by another dark wizard named Cob (Yūko Tanaka/Willem Dafoe) who seeks to keep eternal life by any means necessary.

I personally just found this story to be a bit convoluted and confusing for the most part, so it didn't exactly end up being a favourite in the collection. That said, there's enough to appreciate here as far as certain things go. Again, the animation here, especially in the scenery, is some of the best I've seen yet. On top of that, the lessons to be taken away about how death is an unfourtunate inevitability is something that can hit home for basically everyone - something I appreciated, to be sure, but it's such a basic life lesson that I can see why this film didn't exactly do well.

For my money, it's actually one of Ghibli's weaker films, and it's not something I'll rush to revisit any time soon. That said, I seem to know more people who like it rather than dislike it, so who knows if there was something I missed along the way. I'll let the positives of the film grant it a solid 3, but I have to admit that for me, it's the lower end of that ranking. At least it didn't feel like any sort of direct copy of anything else, kept some originality and told a decent cautionary tale. I'll also give it some of the more horrific imagery to be seen in a Ghibli film, which is almost a breath of fresh air. But all in all... meh.

3/5

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