Poupelle of Chimney Town

Ever referred to someone as a garbage human being? In gorgeous and tenderhearted steampunk action anime Poupelle of Chimney Town, it’s actually a pretty big compliment. Adapted from Akihiro Nishino’s 2016 children’s picture book (which he is also staging as a musical and a Noh theatre production), it’s a remarkable directorial debut for visual effects artist and animator Yusuke Hirota as they tell the story of two misfits who find each other, and save the world in the process.

Poupelle (Hale in the excellent English dub, Masataka Kubota in the original Japanese version) is literal trash. A mysterious creature that assembles itself around a crystalline heart with the rubbish from the dump in the City of Night, he’s the least noxious byproduct of the sealed-off town. That would be the thick layer of smoke that covers the sky, and that smoggy shade is why little Lubicchi (Corbo/Mana Ashida) no longer has a father. Bruno the tailor (Root/Shinosuke Tatekawa), Bruno the lunatic, Bruno the heretic who told tales of a sky behind the smoke and burning lights called stars: His absence is why Lubicchi climbs the smoking stacks every night, why he’s fallen in with the chimney sweeps and has no friends of his own age. It’s all in vain hopes of seeing those stars and proving that his disappeared dad was right, and to maybe clear the air for his mother (Lee/Eiko Koike), whose cough the doctors claim is incurable. At least he has a friend in Poupelle, the utter innocent who just wants to help.

This sooty fairy tale perfectly translates the intricate world of Nishino’s book, simplifying their elaborate designs just enough to make it work in animation. It doesn’t feel like anyone else’s work, but instead truly fresh and innovative while still feeling very much part of the tradition of classic children’s literature. There’s a long tradition of Japanese animators adapting European children’s authors, and Nishino manages to channel the same kind of emotional and narrative resonances that Studio Ghibli reached for with The Secret World of Arrietty, or Studio Ponoc on Mary and the Witch’s Flower (the garbage man’s name is a giveaway, being a play on the French words for trash can and doll). Poupelle and Lubicchi are the perfect opposites-attract outsiders found in such books, bound both by their loneliness and wry banter that won’t fly over the heads of younger audience members. At the same time, there’s a heavy environmental message here, only slightly mired down by what may be a heavy-handed cryptocurrency subplot (plus, with a similar “look to the stars” script device to the lumpen Don’t Look Up, it’s definite proof that a spoonful of humorous honey definitely makes such medicine go down). Ultimately, it’s an aspirational and inspirational tale of daring to reach for the stars even when authority figures tell you they don’t exist – and the value of having a friend who believes in you, even if they have an umbrella handle for a nose.