Mononoke The Movie: The Phantom in the Rain

A ghost story designed around extreme emotional denial and stifling tradition that expresses itself with pulsing backgrounds and unnatural colour. Nominally, Mononoke The Movie: The Phantom in the Rain revolves around an impending celebration in a highly ordered harem that is being disrupted by supernatural events. The reason for this ceremony, the birth of a child, is of zero concern to director Kenji Nakamura's film. There is no wailing to be heard; and no danger directed at this infant. There are whispers that perhaps the baby will be an unsuitable heir, thanks to their gender, but that is simply muttered to massage the ascension of a different concubine to the lord's bedchamber. Glimpses of either the sitting power that conducts hundreds of women in total fealty or that of the uncanny underside that swallows up their dearest possessions are so brief as to be absent. Instead we are focused here on the human churn that caters to the uninterpretable. Adapted from a Toei Animation television series about a travelling spiritualist who is little more than an observer here, Phantom in the Rain is reminiscent of the work of Mahiro Maede, specifically his Gankutsuou: The Count of Monte Cristo TV series, in that every inch of every surface is alive with textured information. Patterns clash and combine, travelling over an environment that refuses to offer the viewer any space that could be considered safe or even normal. Everything here is blaring and aggressive, a setting of kaleidoscopic intranquility that crushes pleasant young women, transforming them into faceless automatons.