The Mermaid

1. Who are the main characters?
The main characters are the boy and the mermaid.(the parents and the armies are the antagonists)

2.Summary
 The boy imagines the fish turning into the mermaid and then plays with her. He takes the mermaid home and shows it to his parents but they do not see the fish as the mermaid. He was taken to the army and they force the boy to forget the mermaid and punishes him. He forgets about the mermaid until he takes the fish to the ocean and runs away with the mermaid.

3.Messages
The relationships between parents and a child
 The period that this film was released was in 1965, know as the high economic growth period not long after world war 2. Due to its rapid growth of the economy, the relationships between a child and their parents probably changed a lot. The parents were not able to come home and interact with their children since they had to work in order to keep up with the sudden growth of the economy. In the film, the boy's parent only appeared for merely about 10 seconds. His parents did not believe the boy about the mermaid and did not reappear when the boy was in pain. This shows the cold relationships between the family.

The freedom of children 
 Along with the economy, the education of the children has also changed. They changed the system of the education to be more "fair" resulting in the suppression of those who are unique or has more talents. The boy's imagination was his talent and it shows that the government is stopping the boy's talents instead of improving the talent.

Those were my thoughts on the film. The ending was very mysterious.... I thought that the shadow at the end means that his imagination won. The people in the film were drawn as transparent stick figure but after the boy strongly believed the mermaid, he and the mermaid was able to be free and have a full body with colors.🐟