Ron­ja, the Robber’s Daugh­ter is a pint-sized delight

When your father is the leg­endary film­mak­er Hayao Miyaza­ki, it’s under­stand­able that you might be reluc­tant to fol­low in his foot­steps. Cer­tain­ly this is how Gorō Miyaza­ki felt in his youth, choos­ing to pur­sue land­scape agri­cul­ture as a career for twen­ty years before final­ly decid­ing to fol­low his father into film.

His career got off to a rocky start in 2006 when he direct­ed the poor­ly-received Tales from Earth­sea for Stu­dio Ghi­b­li – a deci­sion which Hayao famous­ly did not sup­port. As such, Gorō Miyaza­ki has always had a lot to prove, and while his last project From Up on Pop­py Hill was a crit­i­cal and com­mer­cial suc­cess, his lat­est ven­ture – tak­ing Ghi­b­li to the small screen for only the sec­ond time in the studio’s his­to­ry – would be a mam­moth task even for a more sea­soned director.

Adapt­ed from Swedish author Astrid Lindgren’s books of the same name, Ron­ja, the Robber’s Daugh­ter is Ghibli’s first tele­vi­sion series since 1993’s Ocean Waves, and its first aimed pri­mar­i­ly at chil­dren. As the title sug­gests, the sto­ry con­cerns a young girl named Ron­ja who is born into a ban­dit tribe in the forests medieval Scan­di­navia, and must learn to nav­i­gate the tri­als and tribu­la­tions that come with life as an out­law. Far from being a Robin Hood-esque tale of good­ies and bad­dies, Ron­ja, the Robber’s Daugh­ter is Ghibli’s unique explo­ration of fam­i­ly rela­tion­ships, par­tic­u­lar­ly the bonds that exist between par­ent and child.

Ron­ja her­self is a plucky hero­ine (with a broad North­ern accent in the Eng­lish dub) not unlike Lindgren’s most famous char­ac­ter Pip­pi Long­stock­ing, who delights in frol­ick­ing through the for­est despite the dan­ger­ous dwarves and harpies that lurk in its depths. She has a steely deter­mi­na­tion about her that’s endear­ing to watch, but what real­ly res­onates is her rela­tion­ship with her par­ents, par­tic­u­lar­ly her father Mattis.

The ban­dit chief is trans­formed by the birth of his daugh­ter from fear­some rob­ber king to a gooey-eyed dot­ing father, and the sto­ry is as much about his metaphor­i­cal growth as a par­ent and a per­son as it is Ronja’s lit­er­al growth. Although the plot has a dis­tinct­ly famil­iar Shake­spear­i­an ele­ment in its depic­tion of war­ring fam­i­lies, it’s refresh­ing to see a tele­vi­sion series that has friend­ship and fam­i­ly at its core, as well as pre­sent­ing a young hero­ine who is not afraid to carve her own path, con­cerned only with adven­ture, friend­ship, and family.

There’s some­thing both famil­iar and dif­fer­ent about Ron­ja, the Robber’s Daugh­ter in this respect, and in its design, which appears more pol­ished than pre­vi­ous Ghi­b­li work and there­fore lacks some of its trade­mark hand­craft­ed charm, but the plush visu­als of the for­est set­ting are enough of a trade off. It’s also inter­est­ing to see how Ghi­b­li expand a sto­ry to fit with the tele­vi­sion show for­mat, as this does feel like a sto­ry that could have been told in a fea­ture film. Instead we’re treat­ed to 26 episodes of Ron­ja, each clock­ing in at around 25 min­utes long. The extend­ed run­time does mean that on occa­sion the sto­ry drags and some episodes serve only as filler mate­r­i­al, but it’s hard to mind too much when the show looks as beau­ti­ful as it does – it’s a gen­tle, earnest dose of escapism sore­ly need­ed in these dark times.

Ron­ja, the Robber’s Daugh­ter is avail­able to stream on Ama­zon Video, and arrives on DVD and Blu-ray on 4 Decem­ber 2017.