© 2009 FUJI TELEVISION NETWORK / Production I.G / DENTSU / PONY CANYON
THE ISLAND OF LOST TOYS by Andrew Osmond
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n a great many ways, Production I.G’s Oblivion Island tells the same story as Ghibli’s Spirited Away. A modern Japanese girl grows up listless, something plainly lacking in her spirit. Chance, or perhaps fate, draws the girl through a portal into a fantastic world, a shadow Japan inhabited by industrious creatures. Here, the girl learns that the waste and neglect of her world has profound effects on the fantasy location. There are lost, damaged souls, which it is her duty to heal. But the world has a fearsome ruler who wants to enslave the girl, stealing her memories, her identity, even her name. Can the plucky heroine save the world and herself?
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In Spirited Away, Japanese people have forgotten who they were, marginalising their myths and gods. Oblivion Island has a different focus. Its angle is much more personal; that every person, as he or she grows up, starts to neglect what he or she once knew was priceless, the objects and memories of love. It is these objects which collect in Oblivion Island. The film was directed by Shinsuke Sato, who’s known in recent years for directing live-action films of manga, including Gantz, Bleach, Library Wars and Inuyashiki. He also directed Death Note: Light Up The New World, an original live-
