Ojamajo Doremi Dokka~n! 40
This is to
The Girl Who Leapt Through Time what
Our War Game was to
Summer Wars.
No, seriously:
He even mentioned it off-hand in an
interview!
Okay, so that's that.
It's made eminently clear from watching this episode that Hosoda had the most raw talent out of all the Toei directors at the time. It's no small feat when people like Igarashi, Yamauchi and Sato worked on this series; no wonder Hosoda was the one to make it big. From OGW and this episode, you can already see him veering towards the naturalism from later in his career, but this was still early days and the Ikuhara/Yamauchi influences are still felt. To be quite honest, while it's clear that he has not stopped improving as time went by and that
Wolf Children is his most accomplished creation, I kind of prefer the more art-house and blunt feeling you get from this episode,
Digimon 1999 or
One Piece 6. The stilted close-ups, overt visual metaphors and gloomy undercurrent are so uniquely executed that it's sad he probably won't come back to this. I understand why, he's making mainstream films now and the way he approaches it is probably better suited for the kind of stories he tells in his originals, ones that would be successful with a broad audience. But his style at this point was just so much more interesting and unique.
This episode is just really masterful. It provides a more sensible and touching exploration of what being basically immortal in a world of mortals entails than the whole Queen plotline has done in almost a dozen episodes. Little touches like the postcard at first, the truck leaving at the end, even the voice acting of the woman being deliberately natural and low-key. The elaborate staging and repetition of layouts was used to such a superb effect that when the 'climax' of the episode came it was felt with a huge immediacy, achieved by simply cutting to a familiar layout.
More interestingly though, Doremi's state of mind ends flat-out unresolved unlike in the Onpu and Aiko eps. It raises a genuine insecurity which has been touched upon before in the show but never brought to the foreground like this, and Doremi herself was really upset by the end. I wonder how they're gonna wrap it up. Maybe with the Pop episode next? I doubt it though.
