“The Deer King” (鹿の王) is an anime film adaptation that might be best appreciated by fans of Nahoko Uehashi’s 2014 two-volume fantasy novel series. Don’t go in thinking this is in any way related to the 1997 Studio Ghibli film “Princess Mononoke” which it might in some ways resemble. Both films draw from East Asian traditions and ecological concerns, but they are vastly different. “Princess Mononoke” was concerned with the consumption of natural resources that is overshadowed by how history will play out while “The Deer King” looks at a world under threat by a mysterious disease and the prejudices that result in a fantasy world.
“Princess Mononoke” was an original story written by Hayao Miyazaki and takes place in the late Muromachi period (1336-1573) and mixes in Shinto beliefs and reminds the audience that there were different peoples in Japan. The male protagonist is cursed having been bitten by a wild boar. As he travels, he learns the cause of the discord in the forests: The forest is being torn down because of the need for iron to make a new innovation: guns.
“The Deer King” takes place in an imaginary kingdom and mixes modern science with peoples at war before the advent of firearms. The male protagonist is bitten by a black canid and seems to get magical powers. “The Deer King” is not quite steampunk because there are no engines involved–coal or steam. The modern innovation that is primarily illustrated is the hypodermic needle.
In actuality, while “it was known that medication could be injected into a vein as early as the 1600s” the problem was “because of a lack of scientific methods, original attempts to deliver IV fluids and drugs met with little success.”
According to MedOneGroup’s history blog entry:
Sir Christopher Wren created the first successful infusion device during his lifetime (1632-1723). The device, made from a pig’s bladder and a writing quill, wasn’t very durable — but it worked. It allowed him to pump outside substances into the bloodstream of a dog.
Hundreds of years later: “It really wasn’t until the early-to-mid-1800s that injections and transfusions started to be readily used to improve patient health.”
What helped was the invention of the modern syringe. According to the National Museums Scotland’s article “The Story of Syringes,” Scottish doctor Alexander Wood invented the modern syringe in 1853 by attaching a hollow needed to a plunger. The plunger was invented by an Irish doctor, Francis Rynd.
Rynd is credited with the first hypodermic needle (1944).
While “The Deer King” came during our current COVID pandemic in 2022, the book was written after the Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome outbreak (2002-2003) as well as the Middle East Respiratory Syndrome-related Coronavirus (MERS-CoV) in 2012. MERS did have an outbreak in South Korea (2015) the year after the book was published.
The Deer King (film)
To set the situation, the film begins with text:
The Kingdom of Aquafa…
The realm was once ravaged by the military strength of the empire of Zol.
However, frightened by the outbreak of the mysterious black wolf fever, Zol called off its eminent invasion of Aquafa’s sacred fire horse village [火馬の民]
Despite countless later skirmishes, the village never fell.
At present, the two realms have been loosely merged together.
Today, the fever is thought to be no more…
The Black Wolf Fever gets its name from the large black canids who travel engulfed in purple mists and transmit the sickness with their bites. That’s a bit like rabies, but people die quickly and quietly. This time, from the center of a great hollow tree, the wolves emerge and begin to run, finally overrunning a Zolian salt mine where slaves toil under merciless guards. One such slave is our hero, Van (ヴァン) who is voiced by Shinichi Tsunami in Japanese and Ray Chase in English. Van is a big hulk of a man with a soft heart for a young girl, daughter of the woman who serves the prisoners food with the child strapped to her back.
When the black beasts attack the salt mine, all are killed except Van and the little girl, Yuna (ユナ). Although behind bars and chained by the neck, Van prevents a black beast (literally mountain dogs 山犬 or ossam オッサム）with only one eye from taking Yuna (Hisui Kimura). In his dreams, Van remembers his wife hoping that he will come back safe, but his wife and son are not safe. They are showing the red spot lesions that mark the diseased. Reaching for them, they disappear, but the child Yuna awakens Van whose infected blood magically breaks the wooden bar. With Yuna strapped to his back, he climbs into the light from the dark depths of the mine. All of the above ground people are dead and Van notes, “I am a survivor, once again.” In the garrison above, he finds weapons–a bow and arrow. Yuna looks to the kitchen for her mother, but no one is there.
Van and Yuan go into the green forest where Van sees a pyuika which already has a bridle on. It’s then that the title comes.
The Zolians, led by Yotalu (Atsushi Abe) find the salt mines deserted except for carrion birds and begin the work of cremating the bodies, but a stranger stops them. Yotalu has heard this is the world of Aquafa (アカファ) loyalists, but the king of Aquafa (Tesshō Genda) reminds Yotalu, that his kingdom yielded to the Zols ten years ago, and remains loyal.
The stranger is Hohsalle Yuguaul (Ryoma Takeuchi), a doctor. He and his companion, Mokokan (Tōru Sakurai) are from the Otawalle Academy, and they put on a face masks, and inspect the bodies. Hohsalle saved Lord Yatolu’s mother, the second empress. Lord Yotalu’s elder brother has the same disease after the black beasts attacked the royal falconry party.
Down below, Sae (Anne Watanabe), a tracker, interprets the scene and struggles. Once the escaped man is identified as Van of the Gansa clan, Hohsalle realizes that Van is the lone surviving member of the Lone Antler warriors. Hohsalle believes that the cure for this pandemic (黒狼熱（ミッツァル)) lies with finding the survivors: Van and Yuna. Sae is assigned to help Hohsalle find them.
In the Zolian royal chambers, the sickness is considered the curse of Aquafa and perhaps the retribution of the fallen warriors of Aquafa on Zol. The Aquafa king is almost forced to kiss the bleeding leg wound of Lord Utalu (Yutaka Aoyama). Utalu is under the treatment of the priests who are concerned with saving his soul.
But the attack on the salt mines and the falconry party were instigated by the king of Aquafa. He and his trusted companion, Tohlim, go over their strategy as they play chess. Their trusted guard, a one-eyed man, Ohfan (Shinshū Fuji), later goes and meets with one of the black beast “ossam” dogs. He reveals that like Van, he was bitten by one of the beasts, but didn’t die. We’ll later learn who he is and more about the dogs.
Elsewhere because the pyuika 飛鹿（ピュイカ）demand a high price from the Zolian troops, Van’s skills taming the pyuika make him and Yuna welcome amongst a mixed Zolian-Aquafa village. As one villager explains:
Years ago, the Zolian army ran riot here, too, and we never saw pyuika again. Even just the mention of Zol sent us into hiding. Then about ten years ago pyuika riders called the Lone Antlers became Aquafa’s guardians and battled the fierce Zolians. Thanks to them, Zol entered a treaty with us and now our wonderful Zolian wives bake farmu for us.
During his time with the villagers, Van relates: ”Long ago, while hunting, I saw a herd of pyuika attacked by wolves. One fawn was not quick enough, and got left in front of the wolves. Then an old buck lept forward and stomped around to provoke them.” When the villager says it was “an act befitting the Deer King, Van asks: “Did saving the fawn and vanishing into the forest injured make that buck a hero? Or was it simply strong-legged and did what was required of it? It seemed to me.”
Is the question: What act is befitting a king or what act it befitting of a deer king or what act makes one worthy of being a king?
The names of the characters reflect Uehashi’s desire to distance the story from Japan. Some of the names would be difficult to pronounce in Japan. There is no “v” sound in Japanese. Instead of using the “b” sound to approximate such as in the transliteration for the city “Vancouver” which becomes “bankūbā” (バンクーバー), the “v” sound is represented by a katakana “u” (ウ）with two dots. Katakana is generally used for foreign words (外来語). Moreover, many of the names have an “l” sound which also doesn’t exist in Japanese. The physician is named “Hohsalle” which becomes “Hossaru” in Japanese (ホッサル).
But the people of Aquafa (アカファ) are also given names that are expressed in katakana while the people of Zol (in Japanese Tsuoru or つおる）have Chinese characters associated with their names. Zol is 東乎瑠（つおる）帝国. Likewise, Utalu 迂多瑠（うたる）and Yotalu 与多瑠（よたる）have characters associated with them. Yet Hohsalle and his servant/guard Mokokan (マコウカン) are also expressed in katakana.
While the romanization of Aquafa suggests water, the Chinese characters for Zol (Tsuoru) have meaning. The first character means “east.” The second character is a particle/postpositional which functions as an interrogative something like a question mark. The third is the character for lapis lazuli (瑠). 与 means to give (与える). 迂 means to detour (迂回).
Despite the linguistic differences, it is clear that the people of Aquafa and Zol are not that different. While it is easier to show racism toward people whose appearances are different from our own, the kind of racism with people who can pass easily as one of us, still exists. As Van says, “We can all be blinded by hatred and fear.” Unintentionally, that’s something of a lesson for this COVID-19 pandemic.
Through the film, there are hints of other storylines and tragedies that existed in the original two volumes–the death of a young couple in which one is from Zol and the other from Aquafa and the middle section where Hohsalle serves as the narrator. Those things must certainly strike more deeply with fans of the source material. Within the story, I find the visualization of the hypodermic needles somewhat jarring considering this isn’t steampunk and no other industrial revolution era innovation is used.
IMDb credits Taku Kishimoto and Uehashi as the writers; Kishimoto has several credits are a writer for TV series. Director Masashi Andō was the animation director and character designer for the 2019 “Weathering with You” and the animation director and supervising animator for the 2016 “Your Name.” He also worked as an animator for the 2013 “The Tale of the Princess Kaguya.” Co-director Masayuki Miyaji was the assistant director for the 2001 “Spirited Away” and a storyboard artist for this film as well as several TV series. Andō had also worked on Studio Ghibli projects such as “Princess Mononoke” and “When Marnie was There” in the animation department.
While it’s easy to compare “Princess Mononoke” to “The Deer King,” keep in mind that there were East Asians who rode deer and those who currently do are in Mongolia. In “Princess Mononoke” the influence of women is apparent. The title is one indication, but also the leader behind the deforestation is a woman who faces off with the Princess Mononoke. The male protagonist is also aided by a group of women who work the bellows of the rifle-making factory. “The Deer King,” although the original source material was written by a woman (who happens to be a professor of ethnology at the Kawamura Gakuen Women’s University), the film focuses on men: Van, Hohsalle and the male leaders of both Zol and Aquafa. The female characters, Yuna and Sae, are dependent upon the others. Sae serves Zol and is sent to help Hohsalle find Van and Yuna. Yuna becomes the “daughter” of Van. Their relationship elevates Van and prods him into being a better person as he remembers his dead wife and son.
There are also cultural things to keep in mind. Deer also hold a special place in the Japanese culture, especially seen in Nara where the deer are free to roam in certain parts of the city. The Japanese wolf was once endemic to the islands of Honshū, Shikoku and Kyūshū, but is now extinct. This subspecies of gray wolf (Canis lupus hodophilax) was severely impacted by the introduction of rabies and canine distemper in the 1700s and under the Meiji Restoration, the wolves were exterminated due to a national policy. That’s despite the Shinto believe that the wolf, or ōkami, was a messenger of the gods and offered crop protection from wild boars and deers. Shinto shrines were dedicated to wolves. The Hokkaido wolf (Canis lupus hattai) was also exterminated during the Meiji Restoration. There are folktales about a person being protected from harm in the forest by an escort wolf (okuriōkami) and even a legend about one clan leader, Fujiwara no Hidehira 藤原 秀衡 (1122 – November 30, 1187), being raised by wolves. In Japan, wolves are a distinctive symbol of environmentalism.
These attitudes toward deer and wolves are different from what the general American population may have. This Japanese culture that brought us neither Bambi or the Little Red Riding Hood.
While not as detailed and filled with whimsical touches at “Princess Mononoke,” “The Deer King” stands as an impressive directorial debut for Andō. The story, probably best for older kids and adults, is easy to follow and touches upon difficult themes and concepts of colonialism, environmentalism, prejudice and superstitions while embracing a magical journey where not all the answers are given nor all the threads neatly tied up. At a little under two hours, the film is shorter than “Princess Mononoke” by about 15 minutes, but likely, since I haven’t read the novel, has truncated the original story in order to make time.
“The Deer King” is clearly not “Bambi,” but is a serious adult film and yet like the Disney animated feature “Bambi,” might encourage people to read the original source material. It’s a reminder that pandemics are part of history along with the attending racist hysteria. I don’t find that theme as strong in “Princess Mononoke.” Stay for the credits because the animation is used for further story telling.
“The Deer King” made its world premiere at the 2021 Annecy International Animation Film Festival and had its premiere in Japan on 17 January 2022. It was given a limited release the same year in the US, but is currently streaming (dub and sub) on Hulu. I watched the sub version.
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