My favourite kind of cat-people is definitely those from Kenji Miyazawa’s stories. For as far as I can recall, they’re the only ones who don’t try to act cute and moe. I was looking forward to his adaptation of Spring and Chaos, because aside from the cat-people, the stories that I’ve seen from him all had something unique. And indeed, Spring and Chaos isn’t what you’d call your average anime-movie.
The movie basically follows a writer with the name of Kenji Miyazawa (autobiographical?), who is rather eccentric and has rather trouble to fit into society with is idealized views and ideas. This movie sees him trying out various things in order to relieve him from his frustration. The entire thing is quite thought-provoking at times, but I don’t know… it seems to be missing the spark that I saw in Night on the Galactic Railroad and Gauche the Cellist.
After I finished watching the movie I still didn’t quite know what this movie wanted to be, or what its point was, and it just didn’t hit me like some of Kenji Miyazawa’s other works. The creators hop from one thing to the other without much coherence or logic, and I think that that rather spoiled this movie. I think that this was another case of too much ambition on the creators’ side: they wanted to do Miyazawa justice, so they tried to stuff too much in just one hour. It’s a shame.
One thing that did turn out interesting for this movie is its graphics. They’re quite pretty to look at, both the “usual” scenes and the CG-scenes that basically all happen in the main character’s mind. Still, I think that Kenji Miyazawa’s stories are better off with a quiet, down-to-earth approach like with Night on the Galactic Railroad or Gauche the Cellist. They don’t need to be so spectacular and ambitious to work.
Spring and Chaos (“Kenji no Haru,” or “Kenji’s Spring” in Japanese) is indeed Miyazawa’s autobiography, though obviously it was heavily edited and adapted when they made it into an anime. I think the reason you didn’t like it as much as the other two Miyazawa anime you’ve seen is that both Galactic Railroad and Gauche stayed *MUCH* truer to the source material (like, COMPLETELY true to it, without even the slightest change, save for the random anthropomorphizing of the characters in Galactic Railroad!)… whereas Spring and Chaos was adapted very liberally, and owes just as much to the screenwriter and director as to the original author.
An interesting note, too, from the DVD liner notes for Spring and Chaos: Apparently, Miyazawa HATED cats. That’s why the character designers for both this and Galactic Railroad decided to make everyone a cat. I’m not sure how that makes any sense, but that’s what the liner notes say! 😉
-Tom
It is interesting to compare this with “The Manga Biography of Kenji Miyazawa.” The director seems not have taken that many liberties.