Hides a bittersweet story of broken hearts searching for healing.
read more
Adapted from a manga, Bakeneko Anzu-chan by Takashi Imashiro, the film, Ghost Cat Anzu, is co-directed by Yôko Kuno (Airy Me) and Nobuhiro Yamashita (Let’s Go Karaoke!) with a main cast of Mirai Moriytama, Noa Goto and Munetaka Aoki. This animated family fantasy adventure won gold at the 28th annual Fantasia International Film Festival after an initial screening during Cannes 2024. There are plenty of typical story elements in Ghost Cat Anzu which are familiar to fans of Japanese anime – the loss of a parent, a found family, a supernatural realm, a benign grinning magical entity.
The film opens to a summer day in Tokyo where 11-year old Karin (voiced by Goto) and her father, Tetsuya (voiced by Aoki), who is injured from a run-in with debt collectors, leave by train to visit Sousei-Ji Temple in the countryside. It has been over 20 years since Tetsuya last visited his adopted father who is the caretaker of the temple. Things have gone downhill for Tetsuya since the passing of his wife. Drowning in debts and on the run from debt collectors and big city gangsters, his only resort to survive is to seek help from his estranged father.
At the temple, a grand old property at the edge of a forest located near a sleepy little fishing village, Karin is introduced to her grandfather, Oshô (voiced by Suzuki) who she has never met. While Oshô is delighted with Karin, he is clearly disappointed in Tetsuya. Soon the motive of his visit becomes clear. The older man is enraged by Tetsuya’s plea for one million yen to pay off this debt or he will face dire consequences. Losing all holy composure, Oshô calls his son a “stupid idiot”. When his father refuses to help, Tetsuya then leaves his daughter behind in the care of his father with a vague promise to Karin that he will return in time for the anniversary of her mother’s death.
Feeling abandoned and morose, Karin is not immediately receptive to her grandfather’s suggestion that Anzu (voiced by Moriyama), the large, chuckling, unpredictable, flatulent ghost cat, should act as her companion and guardian. Anzu, who is sporting a yellow mobile phone on a lanyard around his neck wear, has his own busy schedule and zips around on a bike as he works as a masseuse and a personal support worker for elderly folks. In his spare time, he loses huge amounts of money playing pachinko. He even has altercations with the local police for traffic violations.
Naturally their meeting creates sparks, at least at the beginning. Karin is selfish, irritable, and filled with disdain and her childish ire is most often directed at Anzu. She’s not quite an orphan, but she might as well be one. She cuts a pitiable figure as she is a child who is constantly abandoned by her father and is clearly unable to cope with the pain of loss from her mother’s death three years ago. Our young heroine, Karin is no saint, and she does a number of questionable things including tossing Anzu’s bike in the river just for spite. Karin also uses her cute childish looks and sob story to extort money or sympathy from soft-hearted acquaintances (she even charms a gang of two village boys called the “Contrarians,” to do her bidding and has a group of forest fairies eating out of her hand). While Anzu is asimilarly scheming opportunist, he has a big heart – laying his own fate on the line to persuade the God of Poverty (voiced by Shingo Mizusawa) to leave his ill-starred, sad-sack buddy alone. And Anzu, dressed for the occasion in shorts and a Hawaiian shirt, accompanies Karin back to Tokyo and helps her track down her errant father and offer prayers at her mother’s grave when Tetsuya is nowhere to be found as the sorrowful day approaches,
At this point, the film takes a turn into unexpected territory with Karin asking if there's a way to meet her dead mother, Yuzuki (voiced by Miwako Ichikawa). They discover a portal to hell through the basin of a public toilet for Karin to meet Yuzuki. The film does a great job of palpable conveying Karin’s myriad of emotions to viewers, being her sadness, anger and loneliness, and slowly easing viewers into the fantastical world of magic with an ensemble of quirky and supernatural characters. In the third act, the film picks up the pace and dives deeper to reveal its emotional core. It veers from cuddly, easy-going gentle peril to a full-on demonic onslaught.
Throughout the course of events, we come to see Karin not as a spoiled child, but as someone incredible hurt who longs to feel connected again, and Anzu as a figure who takes the responsibility of being a sort of spiritual protector seriously. How can we not love and yet be infuriated by badass Anzu who casually pisses in the bushes and drops farts on a whim but has a big caring heart? Within the weird and bizarre world of Ghost Cat Anzu lies a bittersweet story of broken hearts searching for healing.
Will Karin be able to meet her mother and will Tetsuya return safely to Karin? I won’t spoil this funny yet somewhat dark climax of the film. There may be differing opinions, but I definitely enjoyed Ghost Cat Anzu with a running time of 1 hour 37 minutes where opposing worlds exists simultaneously - natural, supernatural; present, memory; love, pain.
read less