Okko. El hostal y sus fantasmas

Okko survives the car crash that kills her parents. She goes to live with her grandmother, who runs an old-line hot springs inn. The ghost of a young boy persuades Okko to become the "junior innkeeper". Between the flashbacks, the ghosts only she sees, and the mean girl in school, can she find peace?

This animated film by Kitarô Kôsaka is not just Japanese; it is VERY Japanese, with is old-fashioned virtues of service to others, tradition, and to a westerner, exaggerated fear of losing face. Like all good fantasies, it has a strong symbolic message to support the surface plot. Then visual style combines full animation of simple yet effective character design with lush, almost candybox background work.

I am an adult person who is simply tired, nay exhausted, with all the churned out negativity, post apocalyptic, dark, depressing, soul sucking churn out from the anglosphere.

On a rainy day, I decided to watch this anime in the hope of a little colour, in the hope of a little hope.

Two hours later, having laughed, and cried, and clapped, in other words, having been thoroughly entertained for a change, I knew I had to come here and write a review.

This is just a beautiful movie, a delightful story that stays with you.

Okko's Inn has the purity of spirit, of love, of energy that is so sadly lacking in the Anglosphere these days and I did not realise just how much I was missing this.

Ten stars and THANK YOU to the creators.

This film was a solid insight into Japanese values and culture. Tradition, death, work ethic, youth, aging, family, spirits, health, food, healing and respect, all set in a beautiful hot spring onsen (bath) village sea side community. There's a lot to like about this film, and even more so if you're ready to look at culture's outside of hollywood western brat formats. A fun watch if a little bit by the numbers for Japanese values.

I really love to watch anime movies like this, it moves your heart and soul, so much that it leaves you happy and relieved or relaxed at the end.

A lonely female child going to a small town and becoming part of the local culture and growing while being supported by supernatural friends is already a formula, one that has served Miyazaki and Studio Ghibli well. If you like this kind of thing, you will like Okko's Inn.

The problem, though, is that events don't naturally flow from one to another. It's a cute girl going through processing of personal drama, but her behavior is almost robotic. And I don't mean STTNG's "Hero Worship" type of thing, it's just that she goes through all of the actions required by the script without any internal conflict. She starts off afraid of countryside insects, but accepts ghosts immediately, for example. Maybe it was an editing problem, but I doubt it.

In order for a story to hit, things need to happen for a reason that is clear to the audience and slightly forcing to the characters. A person who just does what she was supposed to do and then the movie ends doesn't really fall into that.

Bottom line: really cute, satisfactory, but totally predictable and derivative.