Tomris Laffly A gleaming and delightful anime with a large appetite for tenderness and laughter, director Ayumu Watanabe’s mother-daughter saga “Fortune Favors Lady Nikuko” boundlessly adores its titular character even when it lingers a tad too long on her happy-go-lucky naiveté or ample love of food.We get introduced to Nikuko (Shinobu Ôtake), a charming thirtysomething living with her young daughter, Kikuko (Cocomi), as she contentedly works at a local grill house in a small port town in Northern Japan.
Heavyset, carefree and irrepressibly joyful in a manner that both puzzles and disarms everyone around her, she is known as “the cheery plump lady who wound up living here” to townsfolk.
There is a lot of truth to that, as the film’s stunning opening montage recaps, guided largely by Kikuko’s voiceover, like the rest of the movie.
Being a punch-drunk romantic a little too trusting of scheming men who mercilessly take advantage of her, Nikuko often falls in love with the wrong sort and moves to a new village every time an ill-fated affair predictably turns sour.
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