Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko

Nikuko is loud and large, works in a fish restaurant in a harbour town and lives on a boat. Her daughter Kikuko is eleven and embarrassed by her: the volume, the laugh, the habit of falling for the wrong men. The narrative moves between Kikuko's school life and her mother's past. Ayumu Watanabe directs for Studio 4°C, from a novel by Kanako Nishi. Watanabe had made Children of the Sea, and here he inverts its visual ambition: the sea is again central, but this time it is not abstract. It smells of fish and it is where work happens. The subject is where shame comes from. Kikuko loves her mother and wants to stay away from her at the same time, and the tension between those two carries the film. Why Nikuko is the way she is only becomes clear at the end, and the knowledge changes how the child sees her. One detail in the animation stands out: Nikuko's body is drawn as exaggerated and the film makes jokes of it. Whether that is done with affection or with mockery depends on the viewer, and it is the most contested thing here. Who it is for: viewers who like family anime drama and stories of ordinary life. Who it is not for: the pace is slow, little happens, and the emotional resolution is compressed into the last fifteen minutes.