A_Llama_Drama

Isla Fisher, eschewing her usual ditzy comedy shtick, plays Mary, a woman who just so happens to become a wolf on the full moon. Ok, she's kind of ditzy, because in the first five minutes, she's totaled Josh Gads car when she runs a red light, then scalded him with a chai tea latte when bumping into him again later. And through these meet cutes, or minor acts of reckless aggression, she and Josh's Gary fall for each other.

The show's seasons are very short and the episodes are 30 minutes each, making it perfect confection for a quick watch, or as one long binge like a movie.

The humour is richly dark, with Mary's predicament and tendencies providing a majority of the jokes and visual gags. The way Gary incredulously looks on at the goat in her house, with no understanding of what is about to happen to it until it's too late is a highlight. Gary then sitting in an Italian restaurant with his daughter, once he's learned why Mary avoids Italian restaurants is another stand out moment of killer comedy.

Emma, the young daughter of Gary, is the link that brings the two damaged souls together, and thankfully, she's precocious but not isolating or frustrating to watch, making her panic attacks and health struggles relatable.

Unfortunately, josh Gad and Gary are awful. Josh Gad is a massively overweight man, and coupled with his full face of hair, has the appearance of a putty ball stuffed in a fur suit and if poked will pop: just a mess of fried onions and jam. It makes his more emotional scenes where he has to fight Mary's anxiety incredibly difficult to route for. He's off putting both visually and as a person. It's also incorrigible that in a season so short, they needed to strong arm a final confrontation with the wolf by having this clueless idiot drive his daughter out to the middle of nowhere with a werewolf on the eve of a fullmoon in a car involved in two car accidents. And he still finds time to yell at Mary for panicking when the car doesn't start. Surely when you only need to write material for 3 hours of TV you can find a better way to raise that conflict?

It's a shame that someone so beautiful and full of life as Isla Fisher has to settle for Josh Gad, just because she's a werewolf. Perhaps they can remake the show with a morbidly obese woman raising her single son and cast the likes of a young Mario Lopez or Timothy Chalamet in the role of the werewolf? Other than the casting issue and writing of Gary, though, it's a fun show, held together especially well by Isla who remains a delight.

When Totto-chan is forced out of her elementary school for being too much of a distraction to the prudish, pious classroom teacher, her mum nervously attempts to enrol her in a school founded by a loving and progressive gentleman. And so begins one young girl's journey to discover herself and the world around her, even as Japan's involvement in world war 2 deepens.

The animation stays close to the original book's illustrations, detailing how Totto-chan goes from confused 7 year old who cannot get along in a strict society, to a 10 year old with friends, ambition and an understanding of the world and its many joys, frustrations and tragedies. Beautiful to look at, it transcends its own realities with some marvellously imaginative sequences in which Totto-chan views the world around her, finding beauty in a stationery train compartment or a rainy evening. The score as well, works brilliantly to craft a world of wonder and innocence, coming undone under totalistic and dictatorial rule.

Happily, the movie doesn't make Japan out to be an innocent in the war. Through the eyes and ears of Totto-chan only, we see Japan's eagerness to embrace conflict, the effects it has on the public, and the devastating consequences. Early scenes of children reciting propaganda songs in school gives way to whispered conversations about muzzling the US and UK dogs. Later, totto-chan's beautiful Bento boxes are reduced to rice and a pickled plum, injured and disabled bodies in uniform pass by totto-chan in passing frequency, and her ever present and intelligent father conspicuously disappears in the final act. The effects of starvation and malnourishment seen in her classmates as they become irritable, appear to suffer from stunted growth and fail to show up to school. It's all truly horrible to see, told plainly through the eyes of an optimistic and loving child and juxtaposed against the beautiful journey of a young girl coming to terms with herself.

"Totto-chan: the little girl at the window" is a lovingly crafted animation that lets us peak into a brief period of brutal change in a country recently engaging in modern global politics, and the innocent generation which had to rebuild the country once the fires rolled back. 9/10.