YMMV / Only Yesterday

• Adorkable: Toshio. Clumsy, not terribly intelligent, a little too forward, and generally a bit of a hick, but very friendly and eager to put others at ease. He proudly declares himself a peasant and listens to strange Hungarian folk music.
• Awesome Music:
  • The Bulgarian music that plays during the safflower picking scene. Can be found here: [1]
  • A Japanese version of "The Rose" being sung over the end credits and scene.
• Broken Base: Is the film a poignant look at country life that skillfully weaves in Taeko's childhood or an overly indulgent slog that unnecessarily pads out its runtime? Pretty much everyone will agree the art and animation are fantastic.
• Friendly Fandoms: While the Ghibli fanbase is pretty interconnected overall, this film specifically has this with another Isao Takahata film in The Tale of the Princess Kaguya, due to both films tackling themes of mental health, feminism, and traditionalism in Japanese society. It is also this with fellow Ghibli film Whisper of the Heart, being mundane Slice of Life stories about young women finding their own place in the world.
  • In addition to the above, the film also has this with Greta Gerwig's films, again due to very similar themes, especially in how the Coming of Age Story is told.
• Hilarious in Hindsight:
  • Italian viewers could find a particular scene from the film hilarious, and it's (probably) not the random unidentified Italian song Toshio listens to near the end of the film. The safflower picking scene mentioned above has another piece of foreign music other than the one listed, that is, "Dilmano Dilbero" by the Bulgarian State Television Female Vocal Choir (as heard here in the context of the film). "Dilmano Dilbero" has been famously used by Italian comedic rock band Elio e le Storie Tese as the basis of their wacky 1992 single "Pipppero®", so it's likely that Italian Studio Ghibli fans born between the 70s and the 80s couldn't help but finding the scene unintentionally funny.
  • Disney infamously gave the film a No Export for You status due to having discussions of puberty including menstruation, and the film would never be released until GKIDS picked up the rights. Many years later, Disney would release Pixar's Turning Red, which has metaphors for puberty and explicit mentions of puberty, including menstruation and menstrual pads.
• Memetic Mutation: This conversation from the very beginning of the movie, on Tumblr - for some reason.
  Taeko's classmate: Did you get good grades?
  Taeko's other classmate: No. But I don't care.
• Moe: Little Taeko is simply adorable due to her imagination and curiosity.
• Retroactive Recognition: Taeko’s childhood friend Tsuneko is voiced by Mayumi Iizuka, who would go on to voice Misty in the Pokémon anime.
• Values Dissonance:
  • Disney originally declined to localize the film due to its adult content, which really just comes down to frank discussion of puberty and periods. Menstruation wasn't considered an acceptable topic for a family film in '90s America, but in the decades since then it's become more acceptable as an important topic to address; Disney would later dedicate an episode of Baymax! to the subject.
  • Certain actions that Taeko's parents take with her might seem bizarrely harsh from a 21st century Western perspective, such as when Taeko remembers getting slapped by her father for leaving the house barefoot (which is frowned upon in Japan even today, but was considered serious misbehavior in The '60s), or when her sisters and mother speculate on whether or not she might have a developmental disorder just because she got a bad score on a math test. This might be deliberate in order to emphasize how far back 1966 seems for both Taeko and the audience. Taeko's comment when reflecting on the former incident — that she would understand if she was hit regularly, but the fact that she was only hit once means she wonders why her behavior warranted it — seems to support this interpretation.
• What Do You Mean, It's for Kids?: At one point in time, Amazon classified Only Yesterday under "Kids and Family", leading to some of the sponsored items featured on the page to be stuff like PAW Patrol DVD box sets and the Edutainment Show Meet the Letters. At first glance, Only Yesterday may seem like a movie about a woman remembering her childhood experiences, but most Studio Ghibli fans would know that the film was disowned by Walt Disney Home Entertainment for featuring a Running Gag of school-aged boys peeking at girls' skirts to see if they are menstruating. Despite this, the film was aimed at all ages in Japan, like most of Studio Ghibli's works, and carries a PG rating in the US.

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