“Chibi Maruko-chan: My Favorite Song” What’s in the legendary music anime, Part 2

*Added on November 4, 2022: "Chibi Maruko-chan: My Favorite Song" will finally be released on Blu-ray on Wednesday, December 21, 2022 to commemorate the 30th anniversary of its theatrical release. I did.

“Chibi Maruko-chan: My Favorite Song” Synopsis

Maruko liked the song ``Menkoi Kouma'' that she learned in music class. The theme of the art class was ``My Favorite Song,'' and Maruko chose ``Menkoi Kouma'' as the theme. After school, Maruko visits a painter she met the other day and consults with her about how to express the song ``Menkoi Kouma'' in pictures. There, Maruko learns the rest of the song ``Menkoi Kouma'', which she did not learn at school. This song was not the peaceful song that Maruko had imagined...

Index

• A sad story in a family movie
• The influence of war emerges as a hidden theme
• What is the curse of “marriage” in the Showa era?
• Lily of the valley flowers added for the movie
• The courage to turn something that cannot be answered into a piece of art while remaining ambiguous.

A sad story in a family movie

Even 30 years after its release, the movie ``Chibi Maruko-chan: My Favorite Song'' continues to gain fans. What makes this work so difficult is that it deals with a theme so complex and delicate that it's hard to gauge the intentions of the original author, Momo Sakura. Even if you're not the author, the ending of this story probably leaves you with a somewhat uneasy aftertaste.

(There are story spoilers below)

　As mentioned in the previous article , the story of this work revolves around the interaction between elementary school student Maruko and an older lady who is a painter whom Maruko met in Shizuoka. Maruko, who loves drawing, adores her older sister, and her older sister treats Maruko like a younger sister, but when her older sister decides to get married, she leaves for the distant Hokkaido.

If this is all there is to it, it could be said to be a story of small encounters and farewells that occur in everyone's childhood. However, what is unique about this work is that the children's song that Maruko learned at school, `` Menkoi Kouma '', is actually a song about a girl who raised a horse and sends it off to the battlefield as a warhorse. is.

The older sister gives up on her dream of moving to Tokyo and continuing her painting career and marries her lover's family's ranch in Hokkaido. Maruko then rushes to the ceremony venue to catch a glimpse of her sister as a bride, and chants Banzai loudly from the top of the jungle gym in the park next door, holding back tears as she sends her off. Although this is the path that the older sister has chosen for herself, as we listen to Maruko's banzai, we, the audience, can't help but associate the future of the older sister with the fate of the warhorse that is drawn to the battlefield.

What's more, the older sister has turned down her lover's proposal once. However, Maruko tells her, ``You can draw in Hokkaido, but there's only one older brother,'' so she decides to become a farmer's wife. As expected, the older sister is an adult, probably in her early 20s, so she probably won't get married just because she was provoked by an elementary school student, but in the story, Maruko's words definitely serve as the trigger for the older sister to choose marriage. is.

What was Momoko Sakura's intention in placing this episode at the core of the film? It can be seen as a story from a time when most women were still bound by values ​​that considered it okay to "enter the house," and it can also be seen as satirizing society as a whole, where women's possibilities are limited. From the perspective of today's young audiences, it may seem like a too conservative old tale.

Unfortunately, Momoko Sakura passed away early in 2018, so it will not be possible to directly confirm her true intentions. However, even if I can't find the answer, I would like to follow the background of this story from Momoko Sakura's works and writings.

The influence of war emerges as a hidden theme