Mermaid

     Setting: 

    - A country far away with a boy who likes fantasies. 

    - The movie itself was made in 1964 by Tezuka Osamu in the Showa era, also when the Tokyo Olympics were held(?).

    - The story starts with a boy who rescues a fish that was stranded onto the sand, resurrecting it by putting it back into the water. With his imagination, he sees the fish as a mermaid and plays with it like an imaginary friend.

    Conflict: 

    The island the boy lives on doesn't allow imagination by the citizens, and his parents also abide by the laws. Thus, he is taken in by scientists to be tested on. During the first few experiments, he kept on saying that the mermaid had been real. Even through being tortured, he remembered vividly how she looked like. This continued until he was dragged through a new way of testing: Reading books. Slowly, he started to forget about how the mermaid looked and in the end only remembered how the tail appeared to himself. 

    Climax:

    The boy runs back to his home, only to see that the hypnosis people called imagination melted from his mind. He could only see a small fish within the huge tank, and decided to bring it back to the ocean while the police searched for him. As for who wins the struggle of the climax, I believe the boy won in the end. (Warning, this is about to get a bit dark in the second paragraph. I have no idea if anyone else thought the same because this is what popped into my head while I was watching the video the first time).

    After the boy goes into the sea, the video shows that there is one mermaid, and then another following. I believe this is shown because the boy drowned himself. For if there is no imagination in his life, something that gave him joy and fun after a life of realism, he had no reason to keep living. He immerses himself into the water and is freed from the hardships of the torture, able to see the mermaid he found was a fragment of his imagination, and became a mermaid himself, eventually swimming off into the horizon with her because now he can be anything he wants. Both the mermaid he thought of and his parents who sold him off to the scientists became the reason of his death.

    Symbols:

    - Mermaids: Mermaids resemble birth and rebirth. My idea about the boy dying and becoming a mermaid coincidentally ties itself to this description so it can also mean the boy was able to be reborn as a person free from the laws and restrains.

    - Water: Represents feelings/emotions that can range from being calm to violent. In the story, the boy didn't show anger, but more of sadness and fun. 

    - Starfish: Renewal and regeneration. I found this an important aspect as well because it was seen in the mermaid's hair. This comes from personal knowledge, but starfish can detach their arms to escape from predators. These can be regenerated after some time, and I saw that the starfish and mermaids share symbolic meanings. 

    Irony:

    -The irony in the story, I believe, comes from the existence of imagination to the island. There is no context as to why it isn't allowed, and why the boy was detested so much just for imagining a fish as a mermaid(Although it may be because he was so obsessed with the mermaid that it led to his fall). While imagination in our world is a simple, innocent fun, this story made it seem evil.

    Theme: 

    - I believe the theme of "The mermaid" is that the society overreacted to a small thing that could have never harmed anyone. Even today, people might say things that are only related to themselves and others would bash them for it. Even if it's harmless.