We have seen countless numbers of stories and styles of stories in anime shows and movies, but I think if there is one style that can still stand out, it would be a story where smaller events are highlighted more than one large one. Ayumu Watanabe is a bit of a name in the anime industry, having directed the likes of Space Brothers, several Doraemon movies, and more recently Komi Can’t Communicate and Summer Time Rendering. His last feature-length movie, Children of the Sea, went down a fantasy route, with some critics praising its animation but pointing out its unusual plot and movie length. Here in Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko, an adaptation of a 2014 novel and manga, Watanabe decides to choose something that is more wholesome and homely, but nothing so saccharine that it can be called family-friendly.
The titular character Nikuko, or ‘the meaty lady’, is in the background, as the movie is told through the eyes of her 11-year-old daughter Kikurin, who couldn’t be more different than her. Nikuko acts childish, enjoys food immensely, make cringe-worthy jokes, and is a bit of a pushover, with Kikurin doing her best to be the more responsible one of the group, whilst wrestling with her new adolescent emotions at the same time. The two make do living in a boat outside of a grill restaurant in a coastal town, but as we discover, they haven’t really been an atypical household.
Kikurin has spent her time travelling the country with Nikuko because she keeps falling for men who either cheat on her, steal her money, stab her in the back, or all three, meaning she packs up and starts life all over again. Now that Kikurin is getting older, she has grown extremely tired of this constant moving around, and wants to have a normal and stable life, where she can enjoy spending time playing basketball with friends at school, and crushing on the weird boy in class who makes funny faces. But with the two of them being such polar opposites, we see how tiring it gets for Kikurin to live with Nikuko; it often reaches the point of endurance in fact.
As I watched, I began to notice how Kikurin felt more and more embarrassed by Nikuko as time went on; there’s absolutely no shame in wanting to settle down properly after having lived such a nomadic lifestyle for so long. But she is well-aware of Nikuko’s old habits:
“If she finds another unpleasant boyfriend, it’ll mean she’ll be cheated on again, and so we’ll have to move yet again.”
Also, she doesn’t want to be seen as a pushover like Nikuko is. One example of where we see this is where she is pushed to pick a side when it comes to picking groups of girls to play basketball with. She is close to the rich girl of the class Maria, who is frustrated with how the star athlete Kanemoto picks Kikurin first to be in their team, and so when she pushes Kikurin to play with her instead, she says no since she just wants to enjoy the game in their lunch break, and not pick a side. This is just one of Kikurin’s many pre-adolescent school troubles that are picked out and highlighted more than what we could see is an ongoing story in the movie.
What stands out a lot in Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko is its animation. Two styles clash frequently throughout, with scenes of Kikurin being more charming and conservative countering scenes of Nikuko being more cartoony and chaotic. But it’s something that works because despite how much Kikurin seems to relish in pointing out Nikuko’s faults, she really does care for her. However as I first started watching, I began to worry whether Nikuko would be treated as the comic relief character – the joke that stands out from the main story. But that couldn’t be further from the truth, as even though Kikurin is the central character and narrator, Nikuko plays an important part in not just her life, but the lives of everyone in the coastal town.
But viewers will have different opinions on her, I think. To some she can be unbearably annoying and infantile, and to others she can be seen as selfless and hard-working. I also think people who see the movie will have conflicting opinions on the animation style as well; not so much its quality, but whether the two styles we see should work together. Kikurin’s not-quite-teen-age journey of falling out with classmates, crushing over a boy, and wondering why she hasn’t started her periods yet can sometimes stick out like a sore thumb compared to Nikuko’s happy-go-lucky and sometimes self-indulgent cartoony one.
I worried that some plot points in the show were a little underdeveloped though. For instance, Nikuko’s last boyfriend was an aspiring novelist who mysteriously vanished, but left a lasting impression on Kikurin who learned to love Western literature. Only aside from the casual mentions of J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye, it’s something that is never mentioned again. As well as this, there is very little in the way of conflict among the characters. Aside from Maria’s basketball falling out I have already mentioned, there isn’t much else.
The final arc of the movie becomes much more serious compared to the rest however. Not going into any spoilers, Kikurin starts thinking that she should be happy with the life she has now, and to not regret any mistakes she makes along the way. Even with all the trials and tribulations that Nikuko has had in her adult life, she does not look back; instead, she looks forward. I suppose this is the kind of life lesson any parental figure could teach to a teenager who is still naïve and unaware of the world around them.
I left the movie theater initially wondering what kind of story it gave me. The focus is considerably more on Kikurin than it is on the titular character, but that is not a bad thing whatsoever. Through its superb animation (both lush and charming, and cartoony), Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko offers a very contemplative tone of a teenager yearning to settle down, but fearing that the one thing she has known her whole life that embarrasses her to no end will get in the way of that. Then again, which teenager isn’t embarrassed by their parents? Unfortunately, there are times in the movie where I just did not feel emotionally connected to the characters or anything, and the fact that there were plot points that could have been developed more bothered me a bit.
This is a very pretty movie to watch, with many viewers noticing Studio Ghibli influences (in particular My Neighbor Totoro and Only Yesterday). I just worry that those same viewers will find a lot to pick at when they see what the movie doesn’t have, or did not develop so much.
Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko was available to watch in theaters in the US and Canada on June. 02. 2022, with a release in the UK and Ireland on August. 10. 2022.