One of those anime fantasies so richly envisioned that you can get lost in every frame, The Deer King is based on a series of novels by Nahoko Uehashi. Directors Masashi Ando and Masayuki Miyahi—who between them bring experience working on the likes of Spirited Away, Princess Mononoke, Your Name, and Weathering With You—give The Deer King an animated aesthetic that is at once intimate (recurring POV shots that fade out as eyelids close) and vast (an unseen emperor establishes his presence with giant balloons painted to look like eyeballs, which ominously loom against the horizon). The central figure is Van (voiced by Shinichi Tsutsumi), an enslaved miner who escapes his captors along with a small, orphaned girl (Hisui Kimura). They travel across a land under the rule of a colonial power, where a disease threatens the invaders but not the people who have always lived there. A rich supporting cast of characters—including a doctor (Ryoma Takeuchi) experimenting to find a cure and a tracker (Anne Watanabe) uncertain about working for the oppressive regime—nicely complicates the central narrative. As a result, The Deer King offers the personal touch of a hero’s journey alongside a more expansive vision of how to live in community. It’s a stunner.
(7/12/2022)
