Yuki (BD 1080p)

Forty years ago, the famed "social realism" film director Imai Tadashi released his one and only anime movie, Yuki. It was based on a 1976 novel by Saitou Ryuusuke that is unavailable in English and out of print in Japan. The movie languished on analog media until recently, when a French Blu-ray was released. Orphan has encoded the Blu-ray and added English subtitles, translated from the Japanese rather than the French, to create the first English-language release.

Yuki starts out as high fantasy, set among the gods in the heavens. Yuki, the thirteen-year-old granddaughter of the snow gods, is charged to go down to earth and improve the fortunes of a suffering peasant village in rural Japan. Once Yuki arrives on earth, the movie becomes something else completely: a chronicle of the peasants' struggle for social justice against cruel oppressive forces: murderous bandits, predatory samurai, a rapacious landowner, and finally, the local demon-god himself.

The film breaks neatly into distinct episodes. In the prologue, Yuki receives her mission from her grandfather. In the first section, she meets an orphaned girl, Hana, and falls in with Hana's troupe of orphaned beggars. 

Yuki is too clean and too pretty to make a decent beggar, but she proves her usefulness by taming an "untameable" horse named Fubuki. In the second section, the bandit Tsumujikaze and his gang are planning to ransack the village and attack the local landowner, Goemon. Guided by an elder (known only as "the old man"), the peasants organize themselves to defeat the bandits. The next section is an interlude, where the grateful peasants and the beggars celebrate a winter festival. In the fourth section, "guardian" samurai bands demand tributes of crops and manpower for war. Once again, the old man organizes the peasantry, this time from multiple villages, to ambush and destroy the samurai. In the fifth section, Goemon, emboldened by the disappearance of both the bandits and the samurai, raises the rent and tribute on his tenant farmers drastically. Once again, the peasants rise up and destroy their adversary. As he is dying, Goemon calls down the wrath of the local deity, Shinjin-sama, on the peasants.

In the action sequences, Yuki has a catalytic but subordinate role. She rides Fubuki to provoke the bandit leader, to stampede the samurai's horses and overrun their fixed positions, and to guide her friends in pursuit of Goemon, but the peasants and beggars are the main focus. Only in the final chapter, the confrontation with Shinjin, does Yuki take the lead. The peasants are too cowed by superstition - what the old man calls "the enemy inside our hearts" - to face Shinjin. Only Yuki, a deity herself, and her brave band of beggars are willing to confront an angry god. An epilogue then brings Yuki's story to a tidy conclusion.

This summary makes the movie sound very schematic, if not dogmatic. The collective action of the "people" - first as individuals, then as a village, then as a collection of villages - is needed to overthrow the oppressors. The beggars are noble - forbidden to steal by their one-legged boss. The old man is wise and a tactical genius. But in fact, the movie is quite entertaining. There are no long political diatribes. The story flows organically, if a bit predictably, from one action sequence to the next. The festival interlude is charming. My main criticism is that Yuki remains a colorless cipher throughout. Even when one of the village boys, Tsukitarou, falls in love with her, she doesn't react. The members of the beggar troupe steal the show. Perhaps that's the point.

For some reason, the movie doesn't include the voice cast, so I have only a partial list of seiyuu:

• Ushihara Chie (Yuki) has no other anime credits.
• Sugiyama Kazuko (Hana) played the title roles in Gu-Gu Ganmo, Alps no Shoujo Heidi, and Laura, A Little Girl on the Prairie. She played Ten-chan in the Urusei Yatsura franchise, Akane Kimidori in the Dr. Slump and Arale-chan franchise, Mimiko in Panda Kopanda, Korosuke in Kiteretsu Daihyakka, as well as Yoriko Kisaragi in Yume Tsukai and Wendy in Manxmouse, both Orphan releases.
• Nagai Ichiro (the "old man") played grandfather Jigoro in Yawara!, the off-the-wall narrator in Gosenzosama Banbanzai!, Professor Hajime in Queen Millennia, and Happosai in the Ranma 1/2 franchise. He appeared in Blue Sonnet, Manxmouse, Nora, Hidamari no Ki, Yuukan Club, Amon Saga, Botchan, Ipponbouchou Mantaraou, Rain Boy, and Yamato 2520, all Orphan releases.
• Nakanishi Taeko (Yuki's grandmother) played Ryouko in Kuro ga Ita Natsu, Yuri in Kuroi Ame ni Utarete, Helen in A Penguin's Memory, Mrs. Bontempeli in Perrine Monogatari, and Liu Bei's mother in the first two Sangokushi movies, all Orphan releases. She had featured roles in Emma, Glass no Kamen (1984), Little Women, Queen Millennia, Ringing Bell, and Sailor Moon R.
• Kobayashi Akiji (Yuki's grandfather) played Toubei Tachibana in the Kamen Rider franchise and Dionysius II in Hashire Melos!, an Orphan release.
  
• Komatsu Housei (beggar boss) played Pride in Kaitou Pride and Jinba in Prime Rose, an Orphan release.

The director, Imai Tadashi, made many well-regarded films, including Aoi Sanmyaku, Until We Meet Again, Tower of Lilies, And Yet We Live, The Rice People, An Inlet of Muddy Water, and Night Drum.

Some notes, courtesy of Iri and Uchuu:

• The white horse's name, Fubuki, means "blizzard" in Japanese. 
• When the old man teases Hana about not finding flowers, she says she is one and has one and points to her nose. Hana means both flower and nose in Japanese.
  
• The beggars apparently go commando, and one of them is prone to doing handsprings when he's happy.
• At the festival, the beggars consume amazake, a fermented beverage. Despite the similarity in names, amazake is not sake and has much lower alcohol content.
• The volcano near the village is Mount Asahi in Hokkaido, which pinpoints the location of the movie. The volcano erupted in 1739, which may help narrow down the time frame.
  

Iri translated the show. Yogicat timed. I edited and typeset. Nemesis and Uchuu QCed. M74 bought the French Blu-ray and encoded it. The project started with tribute's HEVC encode of the Blu-ray, but technical difficulties with timing synchronization led the team to do a new encode.

I quite enjoyed Yuki. Other reviewers, expecting a high fantasy, have been less enthusiastic. (Certainly the subtitle on some editions,Yuki: Snow Fairy, and the lilting opening song about "little Yuki" are misleading.) You can get the movie from the usual torrent site or from IRC bot Orphan|Arutha in channels #nibl or #news on irc.rizon.net.