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Ghost Cat Anzu
Directed by Yôko Kuno, Nobuhiro Yamashita
Official selection
Cannes Film Festival 2024
Annecy International Animation Film Festival and Market 2024
Writer
Shinji Imaoka, Imashiro Takashi
Cast
Munetaka Aoki, Noa Gotô, Miwako Ichikawa, Mirai Moriyama, Keiichi Suzuki
contact
GKIDS
What is there to do in Iketeru? The idyllic beachfront village is where 11-year-old Karin has been unceremoniously dumped by her father Tetsuya, a shifty widower with a big debt to loan sharks. Karin has been left in the care of her grandfather, now the keeper of Sousei-Ji Temple, who in turn assigns her to his adopted son, 37-year-old Anzu Nakamura. This Anzu is an affable fellow, if rather uncouth and feckless. Oh, and he’s also an immortal ghost cat. That’s certainly strange, but no more so than the other assorted entities hanging around the town—loveable losers, a lot of them, humans and yokai alike. In any case, Karin, already exasperated by her father’s absence and pining for her departed mother, isn’t all that impressed with the furry ginger lout. The girl and the oafish, oversized cat make a day trip to Tokyo, to visit her mother’s grave, but things get entirely out of control when a detour to hell, by way of an out-of-service toilet, invokes the wrath of a legion of infernal demons...
A sort of slacker variation on TOTORO, GHOST CAT ANZU tackles a now familiar trope in anime, the troubled kid’s summertime coming-of-age in a countryside inhabited by supernatural creatures, and offsets the bucolic charm of its setting with bone-dry deadpan wit and an emotional tone that’s tender like a bruise. Based on the manga by Takashi Imashiro, the French-Japanese co-production is co-directed by animator Yoko Kuno, a veteran of the CRAYON SHIN-CHAN movies, and live-action notable Nobuhiro Yamashita, whose CONFESSION and SWIMMING IN A SAND POOL screen at Fantasia this summer. The use of rotoscoping (Kuno also worked on THE CASE OF HANNA & ALICE) adds to the casual naturalism they capture, while the rich and radiant backgrounds accentuate the stylized characters, who often recall classic slapstick manga. Sweet but never syrupy, with a big, buffoonish orange cat whose irreverent appeal Garfield could only aspire to, GHOST CAT ANZU paints a sympathetic portrait of the less-than-perfect personalities we often encounter in life. And death. And the demonic underworld. – Rupert Bottenberg
Showings
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