moviefreak

I remember when I was young, I used to rent a lot of VCRs (yeah, no DVDs at that time, mate!) and I rented plenty of Donald Duck movies as well as Japanese animes and Disney animations. One movie that is still so memorable in my mind right now is The Little Mermaid, the ORIGINAL Hans Christian Andersen’s version, not the happy-ever-after Disney version. Has anyone ever seen this movie before?

I don’t remember it too well, so I don’t know if it’s made by Americans or Japanese, but in imdb I found this Japanese title that follows the original bitter-sweet ending: Andasen dôwa ningyo-hime.

So what’s so memorable about an animation that I can’t even remember well? How much I cried at the end of the movie, since The Little Mermaid didn’t get the Prince’s love (as she couldn’t communicate with the Prince) and she didn’t have the heart to kill the Prince to turn herself back into a mermaid, so the Prince ended up marrying the other princess and thus The Little Mermaid turned to foam.

In my young mind, I couldn’t believe that the ending was THAT sad. Such a HUGE sacrifice for The Little Mermaid for love. I felt that it was SO unfair. I “hated” the movie since it made me cry so much.

Now as an adult, I realize more that this story is VERY realistic. Life is unfair sometimes and you just have to make the best of the cards you get. No matter how much you think you’re in control, you’re definitely NOT in full control of anything. The only thing you can control is your attitude.

Do you have any childhood memory that’s still stuck in your mind when watching a certain movie? Would you share with me?

P.S. Wanna read the original Hans Christian Andersen’s The Little Mermaid? Just click on the link.