According to Hoyaman, a kind of superhero in the guise of a mutated sea squirt, the sea squirts’ lifecycle involves swimming around like tadpoles after hatching from an egg and then finding a nice rock to sit on at which point they lose their brains. This is what the hero of Teruaki Shoji’s quirky island comedy Hoyaman (さよなら ほやマン, Sayonara Hoyaman) is becoming afraid of, worried he’s about to lose his brain forever stuck in the home he inherited from his parents but also afraid to leave its safety to venture forth and explore some other rocks before it’s too late.
He’s jolted out of his sense of inertia by a mysterious woman, Mahiru (Kumi Kureshiro), who suddenly arrives and tries to buy his house off him though of course Akira (Afro) is not willing to sell despite being so heavily in debt he’s about to lose his fishing boat (and therefore his means of supporting himself) and he and his brother Shigeru (Kodai Kurosaki) are subsisting on a single pot of instant ramen a day. The house itself is like a kind of rock pool where the brothers are trapped in a protracted adolescence having lost their parents in the 2011 tsunami, thereafter floundering around unable to move on with their lives. As their bodies were never found, Akira hasn’t even got round to registering his parents’ deaths or dealt with any of the practical matters surrounding their living arrangements but now realises that he’ll have to something to secure a financial future for himself and Shigeru who seems to have some kind of learning difficulties and is unable to work.
That’s one reason he decides to accept the deposit from Miharu, a manga artist fleeing her life in Tokyo feeling all washed up as she too drifts onto the shore looking for a good rock to sit on. They are all looking for a kind of escape but unsure where to to find it, Akira wondering if it’s time to leave the island just as Miharu arrives. The old woman next door, Haruko (Yoneko Matsukane), who acts like a kind of surrogate mother figure to the boys, confesses that she would have liked to try living off the island and was resentful when their father mentioned the possibility of leaving. She encourages Akira to swim out into deeper waters but he continues to struggle with himself consumed by the trauma of the earthquake, his guilt, and complicated feelings about the responsibility of looking after Shigeru who likely would not be able to adjust to life outside of the island or remain behind on his own.
Madcap schemes ensue including an unlikely bid to become YouTube stars by resurrecting a mascot character created by their father to promote the island, Hoyaman. Miharu tries to explain to them that like everything else in the village they’re ten years behind the times, but the boys are naively excited about their prospects while simultaneously trying to recapture the past in the same way Miharu may be in admitting that she based her manga on her own younger brothers of whom Akira and Shigeru remind her. Well meaning gestures eventually backfire, but also lead to a kind clarity that allows each of them to realise who they are and where they want to be or at least what kind of rock they want to be sitting on when it’s time to jettison their brains.
Even so, it’s not all rainbows on the island as Akira discovers when his bid for YouTube success turns sour and the villagers turn against him for embarrassing them on national scale while Miharu also has her fair share of haters along with a troubled past she’s struggling to overcome. What they rediscover is a sense of community and solidarity among those who wash up on the island whether by virtue of birth or some other happy accident. Meeting his trauma head-on, Akira is able to find an accommodation with his guilt and loss but also a way forward that might not necessarily be the one most would expect as does Miharu though buoyed by her serendipitous connection with the zany brothers, nice old lady, and the gentle rhythms of an island life.
Hoyaman screens Feb. 18 as part of Family Portrait: Japanese Family in Flux
Original trailer (no subtitles)
Windows on Worlds 