Miyazaki Rebuttle: The Secret World of Arriety (SPOILERS)

Germans are funny

well screw what I said earlier! After watching Miyazaki's latest masterpiece yesterday, I decided to do at least a couple more reviews, starting with this very one, The Secret World of Arrietty.
Okay, BUT, I think I'll still stick to the analytical and opinionated style of the harry potter retrospective rather than the original story-parody style. Partly because that's a bit more spoiler-y, and honestly harder to remember the entire movie and make fun of it rather than just talking about it. Though I'm still gonna put spoiler alert on this one seeing as, ya know, came out yesterday.
The Secret World of Arrietty, was written by good ole Miyazaki in 2010, and took so long for a Disney dub that Britain made its own dub last year. Anyway, it is actually based on the famous British children's novel, The Borrowers. The Borrowers is basically about this family of tiny people who loves in the walls of a house and "borrows" things from humans to survive. From what I vaguely remember reading the book in elementary school, and quick skim of Wikipedia description, the movie isn't too far off from the original story, albeit more emotionally engaging which is obviously never a bad thing.

look at that hot little thang

The story revolves around Arrietty, the daughter of the small (HA.) family of Borrowers that inhabits this particular lovely abode in the forest for no particular reason. Its her first borrowing today and she finds out that there's one new human in town that sees her and makes everyone scared as crap to be forced to move. But it turns out the boy is a nice guy, not trying to put them in small jars and sell em on Ebay as really awesome animatronics, but ends up instigating the maid that takes care of him to do the very same.
Now let me talk about the boy for a minute, cause I honestly felt more sorry for this guy than the actual borrowers at some points. Now you may be wondering, why the hell is he staying at some rundown house that used to be his mom's and is apparently infested by the mini-men? Well, apparently this kid is dying of heart problems, and can't have too much excitement or else bad things go down. He's staying at his mom's old house because his divorced parents are too busy to take care of him, and he needs a heart operation so he needs to be in a peaceful environment. He lives with his Great Aunt Sadako, but ends up being taken care of their batty old maid, Hara (as my dad aptly translated from hebrew, "sh[poopy pants]") all alone in the house waiting for his probable death of operation failure. And all the while, ends up having to help out these little guys from getting exterminated by the aforementioned old maid. And honestly, with some of the stuff this kid goes through, I have no idea how he can calmly do some of the stuff he does in the movie. (SPOILER START) HE ENDS UP HAVING TO CARRY HER OVER THE ROOF INTO ANOTHER ROOM WINDOW, ENDANGERING HIS LIFE FROM FALLING, HER LIFE FROM FALLING, AND HIS LIFE AGAIN FROM HOW THE HELL DOESN'T HE GET A HEART ATTACK THERE. (SPOILER END). All the while being pretty damn calm and excepting of his inevitable death, and determined to help and protect these poor tiny guys. Damn. Apparently he survives for another year at the very least though.

insert clever shoulder joke

So, yeah. that character is boss in my opinion for the crap he goes through with such a level head, maturity and curiosity to boot. Speaking of curiosity to boot, there's are actual main character, Arrietty. She's a fairly regular girl.....if you get aside the fact that she's the size of a GI Joe. She is a beautiful, interesting female lead that doesn't quite want more but still kinda does. She's actually quite content with her life as is it seems, except the whole HUMANS ARE EVIL thing. Yes, of course there's a love interest between her and the boy(Sho in Japan, Shawn in US. dam telemarketers). Of course I question even if he forced them to move and he was dying of an illness that they could be together. Having your love interest be the size of your finger isn't the greatest idea for a relationship. Fair enough, eventually another borrower shows up who's all native american for no particular reason, telling them that there are other borrowers left, and of course to be the Arrietty's real Local Town Love Interest, interracial romance instead of interheight romance yay. Though the guy seems like his people are savage tribal members and not so much high class borrowers with their own nice home of furniture and antiquities. So, reverse-white-man-burden I guess? Anyway, he's still fairly badass himself though seeing as this is based only on the first book we don't get too much of him besides just being kinda a plot device and as mentioned earlier, a Drop-In-Local-Town-Love-Interest. I should really put these on tv tropes. ANYWAY.
As usual, Studio Ghibli oozes beautiful animation and creative worlds from their fingertips. that are usually really cramped from working so fast for a deadline. Regardless, this movie is not exception, actually being one of the better "peaceful" ghibli films. One of the best things Arrietty does best is its creative worlds of just the inside of the floor boards, or walking to the kitchen. Every sequence in the Borrowers' perspective is so interesting and engaging to look at as far as how everything works and how they made it, and how they traverse the large world of human beings. 

spoon not included.

Off track again, I notice a lot of his movies usually fit a niche of action adventure, overly magnificent world spirit-world or otherwise, coming-of-age, peaceful quiet films with maybe a little magic but not too much for magnificence, and/or combo of all of the above. This one has to be one of my favorites of the peaceful films he's made, seeing as usually those are the ones I have the biggest problems over, specifically substance and wow factor. Secret of Arrietty on the other hand, does one of the best jobs on this regard, being well paced and still engaging without the overly complicated magic of some other films. While stuff like Kiki's Delivery Service and My Neighbor Totoro I feel just don't have enough plot and things going on to really keep it to shape, for some reason I felt Arrietty got it best in this kind. For one thing, it didn't quite fall into the trap a LOT of miyazaki movies get to, a bad ending. The feeling of unresolved or still left to be told is one of my biggest problems with a lot of his films. A lot of em I feel end pretty abrupt. And while yeah this movie does resort to narrated epilogue, it isn't necessarily a bad thing. Though I still have a gripe over the narration actually, because of it ruining one of the good things about miyazaki endings, the "what now" part. So isn't the perfect ending quite yet, but getting there. 
And with that, I think I'll stop before I spoil even more or something, so TTFN non-readers.

Next Time, Spirited Away. yes, really.