Hi everyone! Our story this week is maybe the most eclectic work I have covered since Promare. Cosmic Princess Kaguya! is a retelling of a traditional Japanese story set around the year 900 and retells it in a near future setting with a virtual world. It jumps around from being mostly about domestic life to centering on the VR video game world to time travel shenanigans. It was fun but definitely a wild ride so I hope you're ready to hold on for dear life.
Taketori no Okina, the tale of the old Bamboo Cutter
The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter
To truly understand what this movie is trying to say, it's important to understand the original story. The Tale of the Bamboo Cutter. This classic Japanese story was so important that by the year 1000 another classic work, The Tale of Genji, said it "belongs to the age of gods." While it is a work of written prose that has a singular author, it very much has the feeling of a fairy tale or folk story in terms of the feeling it has.
The tale start when an old man named Taketori no Okina (literally old bamboo cutter) finds a mysterious, shining stalk of bamboo. When he cuts it open, he finds an infant the size of his thumb. The old man and his wife have no children and decide to take her in, naming her Nayotake-no-Kaguya-hime (Shinng Princess of the Young Bamboo). From then on, every stalk of bamboo he cuts has a small nugget of gold inside.
The family grows rich before long and within three months Kaguya has become the size and apparent age of a full grown woman. News of her beauty spreads until five nolbes seek her hand in marriage.
They convince the old man to let her choose one of them to marry, but Kaguya is uninterested and comes up with impossible tasks for them. One by one they attempt their their tasks and every one fails utterly or is revealed to be a charlatan trying to fool her.
A noble calls on the Kaguya-hime
Next up the Emperor decides he needs to see this legendary beauty himself, he also falls in love and asks for her hand. She refuses by saying she is not from his country and can't go to the palace with him. They keep in touch by letter but years pass until her eyes start to fill with tears when she see the moon. Her parents try to figure out what is wrong. She is resistant at first but eventually admits that she is not of the Earth, she was sent here to with humans so that she would form attachments before being forcibly removed.
This is a punishment for some crime she has committed in her home realm and the gold was sent as a stipend to pay for her care. When the day of her return is upon them, the Emperor sends a retinue of soldiers to protect her, however when the heavenly beings arrive they men are all blinded by their holy glow. Kaguya-hime says that though she loves the people of Earth, she must go back with them to her true home on the moon. She writes notes of apology to the Emperor and her parents before a feather robe is placed on her that erases all her earthly attachments and memories.
Kaguya-hime is taken up to the Capitol of the Moon and her earthly parents are left to mourn her. An officer who Kaguya-hime gave a letter and some potion of immortality for the Emperor brings the tokens to their liege. The Emperor writes a letter for her, which he orders his army to burn along with the potion in the "mountain closest to Heaven."
According to legend (this in the tale itself and not outside legend) this is how mount Fuji got its name, because the word for Immortality (fushi) was altered into mount Fuji. That is also why the kanji for Fuji can alternatively be read as "Mountain Abounding with Warriors," to commemorate the Emperor's soldier's climbing the mountain to burn the letter. The story also says that the smoke rising from Fuji is the ever burning smoke of the elixer of immortality and letter.
Sorry to go on such a lengthy aside, I just love this story a lot and think it's fascinating. Specific elements stand out as classic such as the return to the supernatural world and testing the suitors with impossible tasks (the specific impossible tasks are really cool but this section is long enough). It is also an interesting meditation on life and parenting. The Buddhist conception of the life cycle this references (Samsara) is that there is an endless cycle of life, death, and rebirth characterized by suffering. The only way to escape is to achieve enlightenment so you can resist the animal cravings that cause suffering during this endless cycle.
So while the story says she is being punished for a crime, it may more be a metaphor for karma. Karma in Buddhism specifically means the moral choices that determine the next life you are born into. So if the moon is a place of divine beings that have transcended material attachment, then forming a material attachment may force you to reenter earthly life and suffer again. In some retellings of the story (there were plenty before this particularly wild one), the inciting incident of her "crime" is literally her longing for the earth again which makes her unable to stay at home with the enlightened beings.
Thus, this can be seen as metaphor for life and family through some lenses. Plenty of parents think their daughter is a shining, holy princess of a blessing.
So on the one hand she added so much to their lives and I doubt they wish they hadn't met her, but on the other hand now they have to say goodbye and are heartbroken. Not to mention that by teaching her how to live in the material world they have entangled her in a web of desires and responsibilities that can cause great stress.
Despite all of that, she still expresses love for her Earthly family and friends before having her attachments forcibly removed. The theme I see the most is about the fleeting nature of life and an acknowledgement that despite the fact Earthly attachments cause pain there is much beauty to be had in them. That even if we desire enlightenment to stop suffering, it is indeed only human to deeply adore the basic and petty life we have despite the suffering it brings us.
It has had quite a few adaptations, I haven't seen many but The Tale of Princess Kaguya by Studio Ghibli is an excellent adaptation. It changes a few details from the classic, but really captures the emotional elements of what Kaguya is going through in a way that easily makes sense to a modern viewer. I highly recommend it and could likely make a whole article on it if it was gay. That's enough exposition though, I need to get to the actual movie I'm review at some point!
Cosmic Princess Kaguya!
Iroha with Kaguya, in the human world
Alright, so now that we had way too much background info that has still only scratched the surface of this very classic tale, we can move onto the movie Cosmic Princess Kaguya! This story takes place in a near future where daily life is fairly similar but people also have access to incredibly an detailed VR game world that is also a social gathering spot named "Tsukuyomi."
Tsukuyomi is also the name of the Moon God, associated with reading the phases of the moon and the passage of time, hence the name has an association with illusions and time passing, you will also notice the Moon is where Kaguya returns to in the tale.
This story starts with Iroha Sakayori trying to live independently. Her father died recently and she wants to avoid being a burden while also having space to live her own life. Much of her time is spent between school and part-time work that she uses to pay tuition with the rest being sent in the VR world of Tsukuyomi. On her way home from work at the end of a long day, she discovers a glowing telephone pole that has a baby inside. She really doesn't want to deal with helping the baby, but also doesn't think she can just abandon her with the police knowing she has no family to go to.
She decides she'll deal with taking care of the baby for now. The baby grows up quickly and claims that she is from the moon, so Iroha decides to name her Kaguya after the famous tale. The newly dubbed Kaguya complains that the original story is depressing and she's going to aim for a better ending than that.
Iroha's daily life starts being more and more consumer by Kaguya, so she introduces Kaguya to Tsukuyomi to keep her entertained. She becomes very attached to the virtual world and convinces Iroha to enter a streamer tournament where the winner get to perform a concert with the pop idol Yachiyo. Iroha helps Kaguya rise through the ranks quickly which attracts the attention of a rival streaming group named Black OnyX. This cumlinates in a showoff in the territory battle game KASSEN, which is one of the hottest games in their world at the moment.
This also leads to some beautiful action visuals. The anime has been gorgeous up to this point already, but I didn't expect the seriously high octane action scenes they snuck in using an in-world video game! There are ridiculously large weapons, killer flips, a massive virtual battleground, I though it was seriously impressive what they did in a movie not primarily focuse on action.
Black OnyX, in their virtual reality outfits
There's a dramatic standoff with the leader of Black OnyX (who also turns out to be Iroha's estranged brother?!) as the team struggles to win. Iroha and Kaguya end up losing the fight, but the audience loves their performance and heart so much they win the streaming contest by votes regardless. So they get their promised concert and Iroha's brother acknowledges her, offering to co-sign a new place so Kaguya and her don't have to live in such a cramped space.
All's well that ends well, right? Well, unfortunately we have to get to the kidnapping part. They have their amazing concert with Yachiyo and it's as lovely and fulfilling as they hope. Soon after though, Tsukuyomi is invaded by strange beings that have come to bring Kaguya to the moon. Yachiyo repels them that night, but they promise to return for Kaguya. By this point Iroha has grown very attached and isn't willing to accept this.
Kaguya plans to perform a good bye concert in Tsukuyomi on the day they are supposed to return. In a mirror of the Emperor's soldiers trying to defend Kaguya-hime in the original, Iroha and the other streamers she's made friends with fight to keep Kaguya from being taken. Unable to accept the fact Kaguya is gone, Iroha finishes a song that she worked on with her father before he died.
Yachiyo, Kaguya but 8,000 years older
This is when stuff gets really wild. Iroha realizes that Yachiyo is actually a far future version of Kaguya. Yachiyo can be translated a few ways based on my very unscientific search, but the most relevant one here is "eight thousand years." You see, Kaguya heard the completed song from the moon, finished all her work so she wouldn't get dragged back, and then tried to travel back to Iroha.
The hiccup is she hit an asteroid and went eight thousand years back in time. She was unable to leave her damaged ship and thus used her online companion InuDOGE to communicate. They would later become Yachiyo's partner Fushi, a reference to the word for immortality that Mount Fuji is apparently named for. She existed this way until all that remained was her digital persona that was eventually uploaded to Tsukuyomi.
They are overjoyed at the reunion. but sad at the loss of Kaguya's earthly body. Iroha drops her law school plans and becomes a scientist to invent and android body for Yachiyo. After a decade of trying, Iroha succeeds in making an android body so that her and Kaguya can be together in the real world again like she always wished.
Conclusion
Wow, that was a ride! I wasn't super surprised until we got to the time travel stuff, they made the folk tale into a sci-fi story and then subverted the original ending with time travel as well. I think part of why that surpised me is that the story almost always concludes with her going to the moon and the fallout on earth. I didn't expect the fallout on earth to include looping back around and doing a time travel twist for sure.
Overall I enjoyed the ride though, I love this story so having a gay version with sci-fi elements is really cool. If there is one thing to critique from the GL perspective it's that the romance is very light. They don't admit how much they love each other until they lose each other, so we really only get them being honest for that last little section. I am glad they say out loud they love each other and can't be without each other, but I also think it would have been nice if we saw their romantic affection grow over time instead of just being really good friends in denial the whole time.
I don't have too much to say about the themes and story meaning because I covered that earlier! This story is very much about the fragility of life and how an unexpected and unwanted life can seem like a huge burden but also turn out be the most important part of your life. These girls got a happy ending because one of them is an alien, but if that weren't the case then they would only be left with memories and they would be unable to turn back time.
I hope y'all enjoyed me taking about this one! As mentioned I love the Tale of the Bamboo Cutter and how it is reinterpreted in pop culture. I also enjoy seeing how long standing narratives are adapted in general, so this was very fun for me. Y'all stay safe and enjoy some gay media!
