Japanese-French Co-Production Anime Feature Film Ghost Cat Anzu Opens in Japan This July
The film's Japanese official website has opened, releasing a 30-second teaser trailer and two teaser visuals featuring its two main characters — 11-year-old human girl, Karin, and 37-year-old ghost cat, Anzu.
The manga was serialized in Kodansha's children manga magazine Comic BomBom from its August 2006 to November 2007 issues, then compiled in one tankobon volume.
The film's official website describes its story as:
During a thunderous downpour.
A monk at a temple finds a kitten mewling in a cardboard box. The kitten was named Anzu and was carefully brought up. Strangely, however, it did not die even after 10 or 20 years. After 30 years, it somehow became a 'ghost cat' that speaks human language and lives like a human. His means of transport is a moped. He works part-time as a masseuse. He is now 37 years old.
After a quarrel between father and son, the monk's son, who has been missing for a long time, returns with his 11-year-old daughter Karin. However, he has another fight with the monk and leaves her behind. Karin is always a very "good" girl in front of adults. Anzu is asked to look after her and reluctantly does so, but there are signs that things are not going to be straightforward...
The anime film is co-directed by Atsuhiro Yamashita, whose recent work is a live-action film adaptation of Yama Wayama's Karaoke Iko! comedy manga, and Yoko Kuno, who worked on the 2015 film The Case of Hana & Alice as rotoscope director. As shown in the trailer, the film uses the rotoscope technique, which extracts movements and facial expressions from live-action footage and animates them.
Internationally acclaimed actor/dancer Mirai Moriyama (the voice of Tomona in Masaaki Yuasa' 2021 anime film Inu-Oh) is cast as the title role, Anzu, while 13-year-old Noa Goto as Karin. They played their characters as they would in a live-action film, and their voices are used in the anime film as they were when they were filmed.