A ten-year-old runs a diner while her yakuza father drinks and her mother is gone, and somehow this becomes the funniest movie about poverty you'll ever see. Takahata treats Chie's exhaustion and resourcefulness without a shred of sentimentality, just brutal Osaka pragmatism and the kind of comedy that only lands when you're watching a kid negotiate with life. This is a character study that refuses to feel sorry for itself, and neither should you.

Ten-year-old Chie is billed as the unluckiest girl in Japan, and she runs her family's diner in Osaka while her father, an out-of-work yakuza, lives apart from her mother. The setup sounds bleak, but the film plays it as a very funny comedy mixed with drama and everyday slice of life. Directed by Takahata and adapted from the popular manga by Etsumi Haruki, the movie was successful enough to lead to a television series.