Kitarô Kôsaka’s light-hearted and contagiously joyful film contains just enough beautiful imagery, positive messages of acceptance and touching moments to warrant a look.
Okko's Inn(若おかみは小学生!)
✭ ✭ ✭ ✭ Read critic reviews
Japan · 2018
Rated PG · 1h 34m
Director Kitarou Kousaka
Starring Seiran Kobayashi, Harumi Ichiryusai, Nana Mizuki, Satsumi Matsuda
Genre Animation, Comedy, Fantasy
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12-year-old Oriko Seki, who lost her parents in a car accident, ends up living at a traditional Japanese inn run by her grandmother. As she trains to become a young innkeeper, Oriko discovers that there are friendly ghosts who live at the inn and keep her company.
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What are critics saying?
Los Angeles Times by Charles Solomon
In a divisive era, Okko’s Inn carries a welcome message of acceptance and inclusion.
Even at its most serious, Okko’s Inn is calibrated for the attention span of a five-year-old; as mature and abstract as the lessons its protagonist learns might be, there’s no use making an uncommonly honest kids movie about death if kids aren’t interested in (or able to) sit through it.
Okko has to learn how to get along without her ghosts. Seems like a lot of learning, but the narrative fits it in so organically, and the characters and action are so lively and colorful, that the medicine goes down as if it’s been spun entirely of sweet stuff.
Kōsaka keeps Okko’s quest light and perky, not fully drilling into the vein of childhood trauma-induced fantasy that the best of Ghibli and Pixar hit upon. It proposes attentiveness to others as a means of self-care, but it has the same brisk impatience with real inner conflict that the grandmother has towards Okko’s outbursts.
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