READERSVOICE.COM: Which anime or cartoons do you like? I know you liked Detective Conan, and Whisper of the Heart. What do you like about these anime?

CINDY YANG: Detective Conan is a totally different genre from Whisper of the heart. The thing I appreciate about these two is the pure joy that they feed to the audience. The
purpose of Detective Conan is to entertain the audience by guiding them to find out the truth of each murderer with Conan; and the characters in it are all really charming and iconic. Same with Whisper of the heart, the characters are appealing and relatable – unlike some anime that only focus on the “pretty people”. Not that it’s wrong to do that, but my preference in movies is to see different types of interesting characters. [Whisper of the heart is a 1995 romantic anime about a voracious reader named Shizuku. She notices that all the books she takes out from the library have been previously read by a particular person. She thinks he might be her soulmate.]
Besides these two anime, I really like Only Yesterday and The tale of princess Kaguya [2013] by Takahata Isao. Of course, there are interesting characters in these movies too, but what makes Takahata’s films unique is he always portrays the quirkiness of a character really well, and blends the emotions into the background seamlessly. And of course, there’s always a philosophical thinking behind his films.
Only Yesterday is about a girl who doesn’t really have a goal in her life, and she finds her future by re-visiting the countryside along with her childhood memories. And gradually she finds her way. The tale of princess Kaguya is based on an ancient folklore about a princess sent from the moon to Earth as a punishment, and she experiences the good and bad moments in life. When she decides to go back to the moon, because she can’t stand the awful things in life, the audience feels her whole emotion of leaving the place. It’s a mixed feeling because she can finally forget about all these experiences and live peacefully (the premise is she would forget everything when she returns to the moon), but what’s that kind of life without having any emotions? I see this film as my all-time favorite; please give it a watch when you can.

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