10 years ago, a project began moving. Now, the result is one of the greatest directors of dry Japanese cinema teaming up with a rising star in animation for a rotoscoped film about found family, the role of parents, and the funniest irreverent orange cat.

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Nobuhiro Yamashita is a name that should be familiar to fans of Japanese film. Although best known for the low-key yet hugely uplifting film Linda Linda Linda, most of his work is made up of drier, matter of the fact presentation of everyday life that embraces the moments of awkwardness that compose it.

Yamashita has earned a reputation for making slacker movies, and there’s good reason for that—starting with his debut work Hazy Life, a depiction of an unlikely friendship between good-for-nothings who nonetheless decide to keep living on. Similar patterns emerge across his filmography: The Drugery Train’s self-destructive tale of the son of a sexual predator, who boycotts himself at every turn and fixes nothing about his life, yet has gained one small hobby by the end of the film; the two unhelpable misfits of No One’s Ark, whose schemes to become rich are laughed at both in the city and in the countryside they escape to; even the titular character in Tamako in Moratorium, jobless after graduating and submerged into a malaise that won’t allow her to find a path forward.

Despite that propensity towards characters who would be deemed losers by society, Yamashita neither makes a bombastic point out of their situation, nor limits himself to traditionally villainous, lazy characters. An obvious example is his adaptation of Cream Lemon, which depicts a couple of well-adjusted siblings who throw it all away because of their passionate, taboo love—and in the end, don’t quite manage to be on the same page. Be it degeneracy, undesirable character traits, or simply not fitting within societal standards, Yamashita is interested in characters who have deviated from the expected path to different degrees. Never thoroughly unredeemable even when they get close to that extreme, and always flawed when they’re closer to the other. Even in the work that would become his major debut in animation, that taste for the oddballs has fundamentally changed the story they set out to tell.

Another aspect that will immediately jump to the viewer in right about any of Yamashita’s films are the pauses. Although he’s hardly the only director to embrace a slower rhythm, his fondness of holding a shot for so long that even the actors grow visibly awkward gives a very peculiar taste to his work.

As if to make a point about how many conversations in real life don’t play out smoothly, his characters are constantly placed in uncomfortable, overly long shots—played for weird humor at points, but also used as a building block in his narratives. In the aforementioned Tamako, the pace of her life often stopping to a halt gets you into her mindset: that of a lethargic young adult needing to reconstruct a routine through mimicry, which finally empowers her to only just maybe move forward. In The Drudgery Train, the stasis of the protagonist is dramatic and painful; those who surround him manage to progress, while he’s stuck in his self-destructive old ways, within those endless shots. More than a purely stylistic trait, which it also is, that rhythm is an integral part of Yamashita’s storytelling.

If we take “slow and unsteady progression” and “a taste for misfits”, we’re perfectly prepared to start talking about Bakeneko Anzu-chan, localized as Ghost Cat Anzu. Even on a production level, though not so intentionally here, this film has taken its sweet time to reach its goal; not always moving at the same pace, or moving at all for that matter. In an informative interview for Animation Magazine, the directors noted that they were approached about 8 years ago with a pitch for this film. In the presentation of the film by the team at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival 2024, lead producer Keiichi Kondo noted that it’s been a full decade since he started formulating a project to adapt Takashi Imashiro’s manga. For a film that has taken so much time to come to fruition, though, it didn’t take long to convince Yamashita; not only does Anzu-chan match his worldview, but he already had plans to one day adapt it himself, and has since then worked on other Imashiro adaptations like Hard-core (2018).

Being that Kondo is specifically an animation producer at studio Shin-Ei, however, the pitch wasn’t to Yamashita alone. Within the Animation Magazine interview, the co-director notes that even back then, the idea was for him to collaborate for a live action rotoscoping effort with someone that readers of this site might be very familiar with: Yoko Kuno.

Kuno’s talents are many, and they are immediate to notice. As an animator and director within both 2D and 3D anime, illustrator, mangaka, designer, and whichever role she decides to tackle, her style remains sumptuous and exudes childlike wonder. Her constantly morphing animation is the type to take your breath away, and has already been often deployed to give a particularly magical quality to distinct moments; a dream, an alien world, a oneiric distillation of a relationship, or the boundless imagination of a child. She is the type of artist who can immediately make you feel like something special is going on when she steps onto the stage.

In addition to that, Kuno is also very well versed in rotoscoping; a technique that she has often used in her personal works, as well as her initial claim to fame within the anime industry in Shunji Iwai’s The Case of Hana & Alice. Although her work in commercial animation has mostly been subservient to others, it would be wrong to imply that she hasn’t had a chance to expose a vision of her own—or rather, it’s impossible for her sensibilities and enchanting execution not to steal the spotlight and transport you into her world. She’s the type of artist whom producers dedicated to the craft are naturally drawn to, and that very much includes Kondo. Given the timeline, it’s clear that he approached her very early in her professional career. Kuno’s comment upon the launch of the project, which is still available on the official site, also hints that she must have accepted just as quickly since she was a fan of the source material as well.

Fast as everyone may have been on board from the directorial side, though, it’s no secret that securing funding and being able to form a full team for projects that deviate from the industry’s commercial norm is a nightmare. It’s worth noting that the relationships between these core creators proceeded smoothly; Kuno became a regular contributor with increasingly more important roles within Shin-Ei franchises like Shin-chan, especially for the movies produced by Kondo. Both of them tagged along Yamashita for another work: a promotional video for Culture City of East Asia in Toshima, which again shows the appeal of a place through a child’s imagination. When it comes to their main endeavor, however, they were unable to move ahead after a pre-production process that began in 2017.

It’s no exaggeration to say that, with their arrival to the project in 2021, French studio Miyu Productions saved Anzu-chan. It was only then that the production solidified, and it did so in a rather unique way: Shin-Ei would handle the cel assets—which is to say the animation as well as its coloring—while Miyu would be in charge of the art direction, backgrounds, and color design. On top of this complicated arrangement, we’re also still talking about a movie that would be first shot in live-action fashion by a venerable director in the field, and then rotoscoped over with another bold director at the helm of the animation. This represented a first time for essentially everyone involved; a first major project in animation, a directorial debut, the first co-production of this kind. It’s hard to imagine a project with more potential sources of friction, so what is the result like? In short: astonishingly good.

To be more precise, Anzu-chan feels like a film where everyone had to concede somewhat, though in a way that led to a charming result that no individual contributor could have arrived at on their own. Yamashita’s characteristic rhythm is very much present in the film, although it’s not quite as extreme as in his individual works; something that might come as a shock to viewers who aren’t fully versed in his style, because you are still going to stare at characters awkwardly staring at you for seconds at a time. His general dryness has also been toned down somewhat, simply by being in contact with Kuno’s much more sumptuous directorial approach. Even she had her natural tendencies tweaked somewhat, as her penchant for cold colors had to make way for Miyu’s much warmer art direction—something that makes the narrative easier to swallow, making it feel like you’re truly experiencing a sometimes dark story through the eyes of a child.

So, what is that story? It is, for starters, not that of the source material. As an adaptation—especially one led by two directors who were already enamored by it before—it’s a fascinating recontextualization to tell the type of narrative they gravitate to. Anzu-chan follows the titular cat, though those who have seen any promotional materials already know that he’s no ordinary feline; after being picked up within a monastery, Anzu nonchalantly continued to live past his life expectancy… and seemingly in the blink of an eye, he had grown into an anthropomorphic, fully-sized ghost cat.

Across his 37 years of age, Anzu has grown to be exactly what you would expect from a naturally egotistical creature like a cat being granted that long of a lifespan, a human-like condition, and mythical standing while we’re at it. Which is to say, that he’s self-centered, irascible, poorly mannered, and as bad with money as you’re expecting while reading this description. Especially within the adaptation, he feels like a true-to-life, deeply flawed middle-aged man like those Yamashita loves to follow with his camera.

In the same way, though, his qualities shine just as brightly. This disaster of a cat might gamble away a child’s money at a pachinko parlor, even after a long pause where he ponders that he shouldn’t do that, but he’ll also scam a deity to keep his friends safe or even put himself in physical danger for that purpose; “I’m a ghost cat so I won’t die” is a good retort in a situation like that, but also when he has rightfully pissed off a rude child to the point of being told to perish.

It’s when it comes to that specific rude child, though, that Anzu-chan truly departs from the source material. While still owes many situations and a general worldview to Imashiro, the team behind the anime further played into the taste of both directors by adding a child as a new co-protagonist. In contrast to a manga that follows the cat’s adventures with the townsfolk, the film puts us in the shoes of 11-year-old Karin, who has only just arrived in town.

In purely Yamashita fashion, she herself is a remarkable brat, though she has good reason for that; her only living parent is a mess of a man running away from loan sharks, well-meaning in his own way but also with a history of neglect. That aspect rears its head again when his absurd plan fails and he quickly dumps Karin at her grandfather’s monastery, as he runs away to find some money. Thankfully (maybe) for Karin, this happens to be Anzu’s place of residence, and a certain cat is about to take her under his arm. A furry, probably stinky one.

A major theme in the movie, then, is parenthood and the effect of those figures on children. Karin’s acerbic character is something she hides from strangers until she gauges their usefulness, though it doesn’t take much attention to notice that she holds the Guinness record for the most tongue-clicking per minute. She’s manipulative at a level that can easily earn her the compassion of a bunch of mythical beings, but sadly for her, getting their money isn’t quite as easy as that. While she is a person of her own, it’s crystal clear that lots of those specific undesirable traits are something she has picked up from her deadbeat, indebted father.

The movie’s writing shows a surprising level of understated depth in this regard, with certain details that underline this influence. Right at the start of the film, Karin’s dad shows up completely unannounced at her grandfather’s monastery. His blunt, unceremonious greeting sounds like someone who believes themselves to be the protagonist of reality—and the fact that he proceeds to ask for an unreasonable amount of money in the household where he let his mother die alone doesn’t exactly paint a positive picture of his character. Karin hates her dad’s behavior, and yet she repeatedly tries to extort people for money. Much later into the film, when she makes way for her dad’s apartment in the city, her curt greeting is similar to the one at the beginning. Whether they’re aware of it or not, even if they don’t like it, children will inevitably absorb behaviors from the adults who surround them.

And that is as close to a thesis as Anzu-chan wants to formulate. The mere presence of a parental figure—whomever they are—is essential for a child to form their own personhood. That is how, without being any type of saint himself, Anzu’s choice to stick around with Karin ends up making a nasty anthropomorphic cat the better parental figure in her life ever since she lost her mom.

Despite all his faults and her thorny personality, this dynamic naturally leads the movie to a conclusion that reinforces this point. Neither director wants to offer a perfect solution to the situation, nor do they intend to make the cast grow out of their many flaws, but the main duo unquestionably gains something along the way. At one point in the film, a quirky member of the gang gets harassed by a god of poverty in a way that threatens to make his miserable life even worse. Anzu manages to make the deity flee, promising to restore his friend’s luck to merely average rather than granting him good fortune. This is the type of film we’re dealing with, and a big part of its charm.

If we’re talking about the film’s charm, however, we can’t end this piece without another nod to the visuals. As previously noted, the style born from this unusual co-production arrangement across continents is lovely; you might notice some slight discordance in the cel colors and those reflected in the gorgeous backgrounds, but that is a tiny amount of friction for an otherwise very harmonious movie—again, especially if we consider that it was the first time the team made something like this. The animation follows a similar pattern, down to the minute friction. Ever since the promotional materials, it was somewhat noticeable that the emotional volume of the animation and the voice acting didn’t always perfectly match; this is especially true in dramatic scenes like Karin snapping at Anzu, which has her loudly react while the drawings remain restrained by the underlying live action expressions. At the end of the day, though, that moment already present in the trailers is the worst offender (and hardly a big issue on its own) within a movie that is joyfully animated.

On the whole, the abstraction of the rotoscoping process is excellent, remaining grounded when it ought to, but also getting looser whenever the movie wants to have fun. It’s more than once that the animation team shows its origins with purely Shin-chan expressions on the children of the town, and that’s still second to the hilarious spectacle that is watching Anzu move. The naturalism borne out of the rotoscoping is inherently funnier when applied to an anthropomorphic cat whose nature none of the locals ever question, and it gets to the next level when combined with his sudden spurts of feline behavior and simply deranged personality. It’s hard not to laugh at the spectacle when, thinking that he’s been robbed, he alternates between stabbing a completely innocent tatami door with a knife and running on all fours while bristling. Perhaps it’s possible not to cackle when he casually licks his nether region, but mostly because it makes you wonder if that was rotoscoped as well.

And that is the final surprise about its craft that is worth highlighting. Though they did use a live-action basis for most of the film, certain scenes that would benefit from a fully original approach were animated in traditional fashion. This includes moments like a cute, deliberately vague montage across photos to explain how a stray cat became a mythical weirdo—but most notoriously, the more action-heavy scenes near the end. While it’s obvious in retrospect since his work was already shown in trailers, Kai Ikarashi’s work makes for an exhilarating car chase, while reputable veterans ala Hisashi Mori also make vehicle-related appearances. This width on the delivery embodies a project with two distinct leaders, co-produced in different environments, and with an appropriately eclectic mix of characters. Just like that cast, it may not be completely perfect—but also like them, it’s extremely charming nonetheless.

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