Sea Prince and the Fire Child - Dir. Masami Hata 1981

So, my brother suggested this film. He saw it when he was a kid, and then didn’t watch it again for about 8 years. He was sporting enough to sit through it with me the other night. He told me that he used to really like it, but that he figured I’d think it was crappy. Having watched it, I couldn’t agree more.

The Plot: Basically, this is a retelling of Romeo and Juliet (like there aren’t enough of those already) set in and around the ocean. The sea prince is told that fire children are all rotten, and similar stories are told to the fire children about water people. Inevitably, the two youths meet and fall in love. There are some flowers that shoot spores high enough to reach the sun, a turtle that can talk, a bratty little urchin with a horn on his head, and a big booty fire queen to top it all off. They sweetened up the ending a bit so kids wouldn’t have to deal with death (though one of the recently mentioned characters bites it, so at least the kids won’t have to deal with death of anyone that matters), and left out some of the more minor plot points of the original.

What makes it watch-able: About 10 minutes into it, I really wanted to throw in the towel. Don’t anyone take this personally, but anime is totally lame. I know, I know–there is some quality stuff out there that I’d like if I only watched it. Whatever. Who cares? People don’t have to say things like that about actual movie genres, like comedy or drama. Know why? Because if you take the time to watch more than 10 of those, you’ll probably see something you enjoy. I could watch a stack of anime the size of the Sears tower and be amused like three times. Anime isn’t really a genre, it’s more an affliction or an infestation. If your video store is exposed, before you know it, there’s an entire wall or section devoted to it. I’d much rather that space be filled with old vhs stuff that you can’t find on DVD yet or a few hundred copies of Suburban Commando.

Maybe it’s me. I just can’t understand why a grown man or woman would put so much time into watching and collecting this stuff. Well, back to this particular movie. They easily could’ve called the film “Underwater Romeo and Juliet: Without All the Cool Parts and with Characters You’ll Find Annoying and Unreasonable” or “Pointless-A-Go-Go”. People have such an affinity for this stupid story, and they keep retelling it over and over again–it seems like each version I see is worse than the last. Tromeo and Juliet and West Side Story are both pretty good, but it’s only because the people making them knew that if they didn’t go in kind of a new direction somehow, they’d just be delivering the same old crap in a different diaper.

Deep breath…deep breath…
Okay, I just reread what I just wrote, and I’m being entirely too hard on this film and others like it. It wasn’t that awful bad–I had a few laughs, and the animation was okay. Before I watched it, I read up on it on IMDB, and there were all these great reviews and all of these folks saying that this was the best movie they ever saw. I suppose I’m more dissapointed with them than I was with the actual film. For anybody out there over the age of 18 that’s seen this and would put it in their top 20: why don’t you grow up and rent some Hitchcock?

No averted eyes
2 well deserved breaks
5 of 10

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