We Watched Chiikawa—So Why Do Only Adults Come Away Seeing War and Religion?
I went to see Chiikawa the Movie: The Secret of Mermaid Island.
It is Chiikawa, so of course it is cute.
The story itself, however, is quite brutal.
Someone has gained eternal life by eating mermaid flesh. On the other side is a mermaid mother consumed by revenge after its child was eaten. As the story unfolds, we learn that circumstances created by the mermaid mother left the others with no choice but to eat the young mermaid’s flesh in the first place. Revenge then creates another tragedy, which in turn triggers the next action. It forms a deeply unpleasant chain of cause and effect.
Chiikawa and the other protagonists do not solve the case like brilliant detectives.
Nor do they defeat evil with overwhelming power.
They are thrown into an enormous absurdity and swept along while being able to do almost nothing.
What makes it even more hopeless is that there is no obvious villain.
Nobody was evil from the beginning. Everyone has their reasons, and each person’s actions create the next misfortune. Before anyone realizes it, the situation has become impossible for anyone to stop.
A few buttons fastened the wrong way are enough to create hell. And the story ends with the hatred still intact.
What are they doing with these cute characters?
Somehow, Watching Chiikawa Reveals International Politics
But what I found interesting about this film was not limited to what appeared on the screen.
When I looked through viewers’ reactions, their interpretations were all over the place. On YouTube, for example:
People knowledgeable about international politics see retaliation producing further retaliation and think of wars and conflicts between nations.
People interested in social issues see information asymmetry and the social structure among the village, the mermaids, and Chiikawa and friends.
People knowledgeable about religion read themes such as sin and punishment, revenge, and the absence of salvation.
Everyone supposedly watched the same film, yet they came away talking about completely different things.
At that point, it begins to feel less like hearing their thoughts on the film and more like being shown the inside of their minds.
It is not only a question of what the film depicts.
What viewers take from a film also changes according to what they usually think about.
It is interesting to imagine Chiikawa becoming an enormous mirror that reflects the inside of each viewer’s mind.
And the Children Go Home Saying, “It Was Cute”
What makes this even more interesting is how differently adults and children react.
While watching the film, adults begin thinking:
“Is this a cycle of revenge?”
“The tragedy keeps growing even though nobody intended harm.”
“What is sin? What is salvation?”
Without anyone asking them to, they begin carrying the great problems of humanity on their shoulders.
By the time the film ends, they have come to see cute characters but find themselves contemplating the absurdity of human society. The experience feels less like Chiikawa and more like Dostoevsky.
Then they look at the child sitting next to them.
The child is smiling.
“Chiikawa was so cute! And the popcorn was delicious!”
That is all.
There is no cycle of revenge.
No thoughts of sin and punishment.
No absence of salvation.
No international politics.
Only Chiikawa and popcorn remain.
They all watched the same screen for nearly two hours. Yet the adults leave the theater carrying the burden of humanity’s sins, while the children go home saying, “Chiikawa was cute.”
At this point, I no longer know which group understood the work correctly.
It is even possible that the adults, stuffed with vast amounts of unnecessary knowledge, are making the film difficult all by themselves.
Political scientists see politics.
People knowledgeable about religion see religion.
People who follow social issues see society.
And children see Chiikawa.
The children were probably the ones who had really been watching Chiikawa.
The adults paid ¥1,800, or about $12, and took home the absurdity of human society. The children took home Chiikawa.
No matter how you look at it, the children got better value for their money.