Fortune Favours Lady Nikuko

Directed by Ayumu Watanabe, who created the incredible Children of the Sea (LIFF 2019), Fortune Favours Lady Nikuko is an equally wonderful new anime from Studio 4°C. Boisterous mother Nikuko and her daughter Kikuko, live on a boat in a small seaside town. Nikuko works in a restaurant and always falls for the wrong men, whilst Kikuko struggles with her burgeoning adulthood. Beautifully realised, with a nuanced handling of disability and notes of magical realism, this heartfelt film is a warm, naturalistic story of adolescence and long-held family secrets revealed.

‘There are elements here of a largely forgotten anime classic, Chie the Brat (1981), which similarly framed a struggling parent through the eyes of a child who doesn’t have all the facts. Watanabe perhaps has other ideas – playfully re-enacting an iconic scene from My Neighbour Totoro, where a different rotund, other-worldly creature waits at a rainy bus stop. But Watanabe revisits the scene with a sardonic touch – Kikuko isn’t waiting at the bus stop with a magical forest spirit, but with her grumpy mother, clad in a Dayglo mackintosh and her tatty slippers. The choice of colour and expression perfectly captures the belief that so many children inevitably acquire as they become teens: that their parents are cringe- worthy embarrassments.’

Shelley Pallis – All the Anime