This Week in Anime

Oni: Thunder God's Tale Teaches Empathy With Monsters

Nick
You know, I can't say I ever expected a stop motion spinoff of the very real James Bond movie, Octopussy, but props to whoever made that pitch to Netflix.

Y'know, I'm STILL waiting for more news on Okada's horny apocalypse movie, so sure, let's check this out.

Jokes aside, while Okada handled the scripts for this 4-episode series, the bulk of the inspiration comes coutesy of Daisuke Tsutsumi and Tonko House, the independent animation studio he co-founded after working as an art director at Pixar for several years.

It is absolutely fucking precious. Almost too much at some points, and that's largely thanks to the wonderful stop-motion. I couldn't tell ya exactly why, but there's always just something so pleasing about looking at real-life miniatures and dolls in these projects. It always feels like I could reach out and feel the fuzzy felt of it all.

That's a tradeoff I'm willing to make for four 40-minute episodes with this adorable plushie of a dad.

Move over Lum, there's a new oni ready to invade everyone's hearts.

Though this Kappa encounters a lot fewer jokes about distended anuses, since this is still a family show. Instead this Kappa is just in need of constant protection from the entire world.

I'd say you were talking like an oni there, but considering what the other yokai kids have in their bento you'd probably fit right in on Kamigami Mountain.

One of those punchlines that is gonna blow some current-children's minds when they remember it from a clickbait listicle in 10 years.

If nothing else, she perfectly encapsulates the unique place Thunder God's Tale occupies, as a largely US-produced project helmed by a Japanese artist who's spent most of his professional career working on Western animation. The result is a series where the subject matter and characters are steeped in Japanese iconography, but so much of the presentation is filtered through the typical visual style of US kids animation. Which puts it in the perfect spot to be both very interesting and also a nightmare for Netflix's inscrutable approach to subtitling.

There are certainly a few scripting choices that, because my brain was poisoned with mid-2000s fansubs, made me think things weren't quite going according to keikaku. But I just had to remind myself that actual kids watching this on their tablets or phones don't even know about the ancient Nakama Wars.

Granted its most immediate moral lesson is protect your adorable dumb dad from the harsh judgment of school children, which is equally as important as cultural exchange.

It takes Onari a bit to learn that one, though.

Can't be overstated how much the presentation really puts it all over the top. I'm a cynical adult who has to pay taxes and read political news, on top of basically being raised on narratives like this in my own generation's media, so it would have been easy for me to check out during this whole section. But the sheer amount of warmth the animation, music, and performances imbue Onari and Naridon with managed to grab my heart anyway.

And while it's built on fantastical creatures, there's a lot of grounded, relatable elements to Onari's family life. Like having your weird uncle show up and crash at your house without warning.

Like obviously Putaro doesn't actually arrive in a beat up Cadillac with his entire life inside a suitcase, but spiritually he does.

Also like any good uncle he immediately gives Onari a BB gun as a present.

They had a totally sick van with a rad picture painted on the side of it. The ladies loved it. Had to sell it off to pay rent back in '09 tho. But trust him, it was awesome.

Gotta say, it's a bold fucking move for any production in 2022 to borrow the big twist from M. Night Shyamalan's The Village.

I'll admit, that movie would have been way better if it featured Bryce Dallas Howard going HAM on a Taiko no Tatsujin machine.

Note: that happens while Onari still thinks she's lost in a village of cursed monsters who want to eat her. Truly nobody can resist the allure of those drums.

Or the horrifying effigy of your tanuki friends!

But while the requisite reverse-isekai jokes are fun, it's once those are over that Oni introduces the elements that make it genuinely special.

Not just a nerd, but a terminally online nerd!

At least he's not on Reddit yet.

That's right: Onari...is an alien! This was an Urusei Yatsura spinoff the whole time!

But yeah no, Onari's a human who Naridon inadvertently adopted after he and Putaro's thunderstorm caused her parents' car to crash. And he's spent the last 10 years trying to lovingly raise her while hiding this fact from her and living with a deep pit of shame inside that big fuzzy hairball.

And as if that revelation wasn't enough, the entire village finds out this secret along with her and immediately get a very Shiki-esque look in their eyes.

And it's here where Calvin goes from a likable side character to a critical thematic hinge of the whole thing. Through his status as a foreigner living in Japan, it ties the fantastical "spirits vs humans" conflict to the much more mundane topic of regular ol' human prejudice.

It genuinely took me by surprise to see the topic broached so openly, and while the conclusion is still abstracted and simplified for a narrative - Onari is decidedly not capable of fixing millennia of institutionalized racism across the world - it still lands.

More directly, its goal is to plainly state that arbitrary categories are not what define us, and the tribalism they can engender is ultimately toxic. Onari might not be a yokai, or a thunder god, but she was cared for and loved by Naridon, and that alone is enough to make them family.

Truly a shining example for all man- and monster-kind.