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kagenomichi
Since: Dec, 1969
70.187.163.19
Since: Dec, 1969

This was a movie, I think. I watched it on video in class at some point during elementary school, so early '90s and definitely not any later than 1995. (This was in the US.) It featured a boy without a mother, who lived in a village near a big lake. It turns out that, when his mother was pregnant with him, there was a famine in the village. She caught three (I think?) fish from the lake, but instead of sharing them among the whole village, she was so hungry from her pregnancy that she ate two herself. As punishment, she was turned into this giant sea serpent thing that lived in the lake and - if I'm recalling correctly - sort of resembled a Chinese dragon. The boy finds out and interacts with her. I can't remember much of the plot after this, but I know she dies, possibly because the lake dries up. I remember a shot of him sitting with her on the dried lake bed, and a shot of her dessicated form. I don't remember how it ends, though I think she may have come back to life as a woman.