Adorable Netflix claymation “ONI” disentangles entrenched social values

“ONI: Thunder God’s Tale,” created by Japanese animation director Daisuke “Dice” Tsutsumi, won two Annie awards, often known as the Oscars of animation, in February 2023. The work is a four-part series available on the video streaming service Netflix and has soon become popular for its humorous and adorable characters and heartwarming storyline. However, the audience will know this series is more than just heartwarming and appealing animation. It reminds us how fragile, cowardly yet hopeful we can be.

Confronting oni, a fearful, destructive and uncertain creature

The series is set in a world filled with Shinto gods and mythical creatures, in other words, yokai, including mighty gods, tengu and kappa (merpeople). A brave girl named Onari lives with her father, Naridon, the thunder god, and spends her childhood as one of the yokai in the deep forest village. While other yokai friends have found their inner powers as godly spirits (“kushi power”) to confront the demonic oni (ogres) who threaten to attack the village on the night of the demon moon, only Onari struggles to find her kushi power. Through her journey to find her power, she reveals the secret that her father has concealed for a long time.

The story depicts how horrifying and destructive oni are from the yokai’s point of view. However, the audience won’t know what they are or look like until the very end of the story, just like Onari and her yokai friends won’t. They train hard to confront oni just because adults teach them that oni should be killed. Their psychological phenomenon has similarities to the Japanese culture of categorizing things into uchi and soto, the ins and the outs in English.

What is the “uchi-soto” concept?

Japanese used to categorize things and people into two categories: uchi (inside) and soto (outside), depending on how they are similar to something or someone they know. While anything that belongs to uchi is warmly treated like their families and friends, others categorized as soto are considered different and kept out from their community due to people’s fear.

We used to fear what we didn’t understand

In the series, there are many scenes in which characters put boundaries and try to exclude different things besides the case of oni. The villagers avoid Naridon, Onari’s father, because he is an oddball, and the Japanese human boys tease Onari’s human friend Calvin because he is a foreigner. As depicted in the work, the Japanese actually used to fear and keep out what they didn’t understand and looked different. And what about now?

Immigrants, climate change, new values and new generations . . . There are countless things to emerge that are unknown and inexplicable today. It is meaningful to create the work as a Japanese animation because the hesitancy to accept anything different from themselves is still rooted in the Japanese mindset. While children and a teacher made a breakthrough in understanding the unknown in the series, we should also stop and reflect on our own lives. Are we confident enough to understand the unknown and accept differences?