If you were to make a list of the most distinguished animation directors of all time, Masashi Ando would be one of the first names included. In spite of never serving as a director himself, Ando has collaborated with and elevated the works of practically all the greatest film directors of the past thirty years. Ando has worked as character designer and animation director on some of Hayao Miyazaki and Satoshi Kon’s most esteemed films, and has continued to cement his legacy by collaborating with the next generation of talent, with his guiding hand on animation direction contributing to Your Name’s global success. As such, when it was announced that Masashi Ando was working alongside fellow Ghibli alumni Masayuki Miyauji in directing a feature film, at least a touch of hyperventilating was in order.
What’s more, Ando and Miyauji would be adapting a book series by Nahoko Uehashi, who is probably best known to anime fans as the writer of Moribito: Guardian of the Spirit. Uehashi writes thoughtful, character-driven works of fantasy, with her fantastical elements never overwhelming the core focus on how people interact both on an individual and cultural level, and a clear love of the natural world undergirding her human drama. Her strengths as a writer seemed neatly matched to a director who’d worked with Miyazaki, Kon, and Hiroyuki Okiura, and the resulting film feels like a natural companion to both the fantasy drama of Princess Mononoke (on which Ando served as character designer and animation director), as well as the more pensive, character-driven works that have characterized his career.
At the same time, the disparate passions of Uehashi and Ando can at times promote a certain dramatic friction. Uehashi clearly loves sculpting vast and well-populated worlds, while Ando is content focusing on a single character relationship, or the way grass moves as it is touched by a light wind. In spite of The Deer King’s complex stew of political tensions, so much of its power is conveyed through small feats of character acting that simply describing The Deer King’s narrative is insufficient to convey its effect (the sign of a work truly at home in animation). Nonetheless, the film’s story is quite engaging in its own right, so I’ll at least lay out the basics.
The Deer King takes place in the Kingdom of Aquafa, a land wracked by conflict. Years ago, the Empire of Zol invaded and overwhelmed Aquafa, their rampage only ending in the face of the overpowering Black Wolf Fever. Spread by wolves who seem to rise up from the land like ancestral protectors, the disease proved impossible to treat, prompting an uneasy peace between Zol and the new vassal state of Aquafa. Years later, the rulers of both nations hatch new plots while their peoples intermingle freely, until a man named Van and his adopted daughter Yuna end up contracting yet surviving the terrible disease. Serving as the living antidote to Aquafa’s martial trump card, Van will end up changing the destiny of both nations.
With a protagonist who has contracted either a blessing or a curse from the supernatural world, a conflict between modernization and old traditions, and a race to kill the gods of nature, it’s quite easy to draw narrative parallels between The Deer King and Princess Mononoke. But crucially, the conflict here isn’t between the natural world and humanity – it is between opposing factions on both nature and humanity’s sides, none of whom are entirely wrong. Though the King of Aquafa seeks the death of Van, and the continued proliferation of the Black Wolf Fever, he does so because to lose this power would likely mean the end of Aquafan independence and the destruction of their most sacred places. What is most true and intractable of all these factions is that they have undeniably suffered at each other’s hands – the question is, can this suffering be redressed in a way that seems just, and which does not invite further revenge?
The contradictory yet equally sympathetic motives of The Deer King’s many factions and characters call to life the genuine complexity of post-war society, where the relative heat of any particular grudge varies wildly between individuals and cultures. While the leaders of Zol and Aquafa maintain a necessary urgency in their brinkmanship, the people who actually live on these lands age and intermingle and become as one, the healing of both the human and natural world evoked through the returning figure of the “pyuika” (a deer native to Aquafa, traditionally used as mounts). Just as the plague-bearing wolves embody the lingering violence of war, so do the pyuika embody a desperate hope for renewal, that a new future might be born from our grudges and scars.
As Van and Yuna settle into a village that is hoping to farm pyuika, Van finds talents gained from a lifetime of war bearing new, surprising fruit, as he teaches Aquafase and Zolians alike to live alongside these gentle creatures. As with so much in The Deer King, mere summary of Van’s journey cannot convey this process of shedding old nightmares and reaching towards a new dawn – it is captured only in the unsteady way in which Yuna settles into his lap, or his look of surprise and gratitude at being truly valued for his skill with the pyuika. No formal argument could describe Van’s journey from protector to father, or the people of this village’s transition from Aquafase and Zolians to families without distinction – but in Ando and his animators’ delicate hands, it is easy to see how time and familiarity might mend what no treaty could set right.
Eventually, Yuna is stolen away from Van, as Aquafa’s political and supernatural factions squabble over whether he must be assassinated or crowned the “Dog King.” The natural world is not framed here as inherently righteous or inevitable in its domination; it is certainly powerful, but it is also fluid, and only as noble as the hand guiding it. Just as Van’s powers can embody either the vengeful hunt of the wolf or the prayer for regrowth of the pyuika, so are the powers beneath this world ambiguous and untrustworthy. When we assume deference to any deity, we are merely seeking to set questions of morality and consequence in the hands of others; in The Deer King, such choices are always recognized as an abandonment of our own moral duty, to answer the hard questions and challenge our personal sense of justice.
These questions of public duty versus personal desire, and of nature versus science, are neatly embodied in the trio who seek to recover Yuna. Van seeks Yuna, the doctor Hohsalle seeks Van’s antibody-rich blood, and the tracker Sai wishes to kill Van in order to protect Aquafa – an odd starting point for a friendship, and a tidy illustration of The Deer King’s nested moral questions. Is it justice for Sai to sacrifice this innocent man in order to preserve the future of the Aquafase? Is Van right to ignore the promise his blood represents, and instead seek to protect the child he loves? If Hohsalle actually develops a vaccine, will stripping the Aquafase of their only bargaining chip truly result in a better world?
These questions evade easy answers, couched as they are in so much personal baggage and second-degree consequences. Through Uehashi’s graceful weaving of cross-generational conflicts and Ando’s tender evocation of the lived experience of loss and grief, it is impossible to blame any of these characters for their actions, or assume we ourselves would do a better job of defining justice. Conflict is woven so deeply into the lives of these people that destruction might seem like destiny, as much a dictate of the gods as the implacable Black Wolf Fever. But after spending the film’s length being told what’s impossible or inevitable, Hohsalle utters the plea that is our only defense against ignorance, violence, and ruin: “it might seem like destiny, but resisting destiny is how we survive, is it not?” Let not your ambitions be guided by prophecy or revenge: look clearly forward, and leave the past behind you.
That is what is most important. The truest magic, the power this film finds most laudable and remarkable, is our capacity as humans to forgive and move on, and perhaps find ourselves in new lives we never imagined. The village Van and Yuna visit is The Deer King’s home and prayer, embodying the hope that in spite of past injustices, ordinary people will always be able to find commonality and love, no matter what color their banners. Through Yuna, Van finds a route to forgive the past, and dedicate himself to a better future. Through Van, Yuna is provided a shelter in the storm, preceding a dawn where all people might stand as one.
The Deer King is stately, familiar, and just a touch creaky in its construction. It is a story of renewal, and its very existence feels like a different kind of renewal, with the legendary Ando finally following in the footsteps of the masters he’s collaborated with. The creation of meditative, ambitious films like this, films that buck all the trends of modern TV animation, is a rare and precious thing. If there is still room for films like The Deer King, perhaps destiny might be fought, and a fertile land for anime’s greatest creators might be preserved.
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