Category: Language Acquisition

The movie ちびまる子ちゃん started as a manga novel written by Momoko Sakura, but later made into 3 separate movies. The one we watched was produced in December 15, 1990 by Tsutomu Shibayama. It follows the life of a little girl named Sakura, otherwise known as Maruko or Chibi Maruko-chan. She is in third grade and lives with her parents, sister, and grandparents. In class, her 2 classmates Oono and Sugiyama have been the best of friends since forever. They work extremely well together and are always with each other. They’re best friends who have made a pact to be together forever and to venture through life together. With the upcoming sports festival, all the classes are preparing for the events, including Maruko’s class. Oono and Sugiyama work so well together in practice, defending each other and protecting each other that everyone just expects them to win. However, during the sports competition, Oono gets surrounded by 5 groups from the other team and can’t escape. He calls for Sugiyama’s help, but Sugiyama can’t get there in time, and Oono loses for the first time in his life. The white team ends up losing, and they’re both disappointed in each other. When they meet up afterward, they blame each other for the loss, Sugiyama –> Oono for losing and Oono –> Sugiyama for not helping him in time. They don’t talk to each other for the rest of autumn. Finally, at the choral competition between all the classes, Oono loses his voice in the final performance, and Sugiyama sings for him instead and they rekindle their friendship. Everything goes well for a while, they even attend the new years’ bell ringing together and wish for their friendship to last in the new year. As the weeks pass, Oono’s father is given another job in Tokyo, which means that Oono and his family has to move, breaking up Sugiyama and Oono. Their friendship takes a turn for the worse and they both say things to each other that hurts the others’ feelings. Sugiyama says he’ll finally be able to rule the playground by himself after Oono’s gone, and Oono says he can’t change the fact that he’s moving because he’s a kid. Their dreams together are shattered because of the move, and so is their friendship. At Oono’s farewell party held in class, Sugiyama prepares a demonstration for Oono, where they both get to live out their dream of being sailors together. The whole class goes to the train station to see Oono off, and Sugiyama says “don’t forget me”.

My favorite characters are the grandpa and the sister because the grandpa is very cute. He reminds me of my own grandparents because they both get really bored and want to do something useful. They’re also the ones that are willing to take you anywhere you want, even when your parents won’t take you. You can always count on your grandparents to be up for the adventure and they’ll always act as silly as the youth. They are the same as kids, just older. I also like the sister because she’s very mature and it also reminds me of my brother. We always have sibling fights and disagreements like how she wouldn’t let Maruko sleep in her bed, but you still care for them, like how she cheered her sister on during the marathon.

Some cultural observations are the holidays and events that appeared in the movie. In American schools, they don’t really have such a thing as a choral competition or sports day where the whole school comes together to form teams and compete. They might have something similar, but it’s not on the same scale as in this movie. Also, they celebrate the coming of the new years by going to the temple, ringing the bell, and throwing coins to wish for what they want in the coming new years. Americans have a very distinct tradition of watching the ball drop on new years that is very different from the Japanese.

I really enjoyed the movie, and how the plot slowly built up. It was interesting to see the movie from Maruko’s point of view, but Maruko wasn’t even the main character/main part of the movie. She was just like the person whose point of view you were taking. That made it seem like we were Maruko and we saw everything she saw, as well as everything she felt. We became Maruko. I think it was good to not show us the point of view of Sugiyama or Oono (main characters) because then we wouldn’t have seen how special their friendship is, or how special other people knew their friendship was.