Isao Takahata does not get as much credit as Miyazaki for his strong female characters, especially considering how, unlike Miyazaki’s characters, Takahata’s girls and women exist within the bounds of our society. His 1991 anime Only Yesterday revolves around a similarly strong female character, Taeko. She is a 27-year-old Tokyo ‘salary woman’ who is taking a summer vacation, and through a series of flashbacks, we get to alternate between her current situation and her perspective as a ten-year-old.
Even though the film alternates between ten-year-old and 27-year-old Taeko, it is clear that the younger version of the main character is the lead for the movie. The manga that the anime is based on, 思ひ出ポロポロ (Memories Falling, Falling), includes only the timeline of the younger Taeko. It almost feels like the movie chose to have an adult version of Taeko just to give a strong structural plot to the movie, as the manga leans more toward the slice-of-life genre.
We will all be able to see our childhood selves in the younger Taeko. The anime forces us to sympathize and see her point of view by taking her and all her problems as seriously as she does. This is a great feat for the director because this level of tenderness and understanding of childhood is rarely seen in movies, even those that are either catered toward children themselves or are about childhood.
Whatever Taeko goes through or wants, her family is never able to take her seriously. This, I feel, is the tragedy of childhood – the stark difference between what things feel like to you and how it looks to everyone else. There is something really unfair about being small, physically, and being young – something I don’t feel like films explore as often as they should.
As a child, you are not well-adapted enough to deal with these little things that happen to you, and since you don’t have the large life experience of an adult, you don’t really understand that these things don’t matter. Taeko is a clear example of how it’s not just the big traumas from childhood that mold you and haunt you in your adulthood. It’s the little tragedies and unfairness of life happening at an age where you are not well-equipped to process it at all. There is a certain powerlessness that comes with being young, and the pineapple scene encapsulates it perfectly. She cannot reject food that she doesn’t enjoy eating.
Taeko does not have a sad childhood by any means and if we consider the place and time where it is based, her parents do love her and care for her and are not behaving in any way that is not in her interest. But we see the people around her stifling her creativity and non-conventional thinking on various different occasions.
Her parents just want her to conform to what is acceptable by society and barely does she get any recognition or praise for the things that she is actually good at. And her relationship with her sisters seems similarly stifling. Maybe the sibling rivalry would have looked more acceptable if the age gap between them was not so huge but since that’s not the case, it just feels like bullying.
Taeko’s mother is not a cruel woman, but she is not affectionate or kind towards her. Even when she achieves something like her essays or acting skills, we never see her praise her daughter or say anything good about her. But has no qualms questioning her intelligence because she is not good at Maths. The visualizing of the fraction was such a wonderful metaphor to show the intelligence and intuitive learning methods that Taeko uses. Taeko brings forth a really valid question in a logical manner but instead of just telling her that they don’t know the answer to that, her sisters (and possibly her teachers) just undermine her and label her as stupid.
A more Jungian read to the movie would be about how Taeko was able to find her inner child and accept her. And by doing so she was able to become a more authentic person and take a firmer stance on what matters to her personally.
Takahata uses his animation style to make it very clear that the jump back in time is not showcasing what had happened in the past but are just memories. In contrast to the realistic faces with nuanced expressions in the current timeline, the memories are drawn in washed-out colours with anime-style faces for the characters. Moreover, the backgrounds are left unfinished in the memories to showcase the void beyond this specific moment and action.
The movie achieves the great feat of being very sentimental without being sappy. Though a lot of movies have tried to do so, Only Yesterday perfectly captures the fundamental childhood experience in a way that has never been done before.
