Review of the animated film Ghost Cat Anzu

On paper, Ghost Cat Anzu appears to be this year's most family-friendly film at the annual Scotland Loves Animation Festival, now in its 15th year. Compared to most other films, audiences The audience certainly includes a higher proportion of families with children. Perhaps they weren't expecting such a deeply strange film, with a loosely structured, humorous first half and a second, more action-packed half that delves into a chaotic exploration of Earth. Buddhist prison, complete with satanic torture and violent comedy. disturbing afterlife implications for at least one central character. We go from the funny cat person licking his balls to “Needle Mountain Hell” and “The Great Screaming Hell” in just a few minutes.

Ghost Cat Anzu is a maniac and I love it.

It's not just the messy plot that makes Ghost Cat Anzu different. First, it's a French-Japanese co-production and an adaptation of a relatively obscure 17-year-old manga series (although a sequel began publication earlier this year ). Screenwriter Shinji Imaoka is famous for his work on a number of erotic “pink films,” a brave choice for a “family” film. Unusually, Ghost Cat Anzu has two directors because, in the style of The Case of Hana and Alice, the film was first shot with an entirely live-action director, then digitally drawn under the auspices of an animation director. However, I hesitate to call the animation style pure rotoscoping—although the characters move in a more natural style than in many other anime, it's not as distracting or intentionally provocative as Flowers of Evil, the film displays its naturalistic ugliness. Here, the live-action performances are transformed not into something strange or disconcerting but human and understandable, even fantastical.

Let's take Karin as an example – she's a child. Manipulative and conniving, she was not a “good” child, but life was not “kind” to her either. We quickly learn that she changes her attitude depending on the audience. Toward her father, she is rude and condescending, calling him only by his first name and without honorifics. Around other adults, such as her grandfather, she keeps her eyes wide open and her smile wide as she pretends to be a “good girl.” It's funny and a little sad how she takes advantage of the red-faced village boys to pursue her revenge plots. The animation style captures every nuance of her body language, adding to our understanding of her complex, conflicted personality. In particular, her facial expressions are very funny. It's unusual for a child in this type of animation to have such a perfect appearance – she's a prime example of a character whose actions are obnoxious but still resonates with the audience.

Despite being an immortal “ghost cat of supernatural proportions” (a translation of the Japanese term “bakeneko”), Anzu himself acts more like a 37-year-old, single, somewhat quirky uncle who likes to wear Hawaiian shirts and farting loudly in public. His facial expressions rarely change – his eyes are wide and hard to read, expressed mostly by liberal use of strangely suspended drops of sweat. He has a funny mistake, getting caught by the police for driving a motorbike without a license and losing Karin's money while playing pachinko. At times, he was an unfair target for Karin's resentment, but as a member of her family, he loved and cared for her, sacrificing and suffering for her happiness. It is really a good cat.

Anzu is not the only strange creature. In this version of rural Japan, the supernatural is just another aspect of daily life—so when we meet various yokai, they engage in normal human activities and no one else. blink. Of course, tanuki can serve as golf caddies, and apparently, a human-sized frog would dig giant holes and run its own hot springs pool. There's a group of cute little spherical birds straight out of a Miyazaki movie and a really weird-looking mushroom guy who adds to the extremely colorful supporting cast.

Although Anzu's silly antics caused a lot of laughter among festival audiences, this is a slow-paced film with odd comedic timing, where it takes a long time to whatever happens. That's not really a criticism; Many writers and directors have spent their entire careers producing slice-of-life cartoons that celebrate the joys of slow life. So it comes as a surprise when Ghost Cat Anzu goes to such strange – and disturbing – locations in the film's second half – transforming her rural existence first into urban Tokyo and then into different levels of the Buddhist Hell, here depicted as a luxury hotel inhabited by Chinese-style demons and the souls of the dead. Compare with Keiichi Hara's Colorful Spring, with the recently deceased lining up to receive details about the fate of their souls from business attendants.

I don't want to spoil the details of why the characters end up in hell or what they do there, but the movie culminates in a truly insane car chase involving arriving in a minibus full of demons, Anzu shows off his most dangerous motorbike driving skills and a sports car scene driven by yokai is crazy animated. It's all so silly, and while hugely entertaining for adults, there's an element of rather brutal violence, clearly played for laughs. It can be overwhelming for young children and the end result of these events can lead to challenging conversations questioning children about Eastern concepts of the afterlife that may require parents to join the Death Spiral Wikipedia.

At its core, Ghost Cat Anzu is a film about a young girl grappling with the scars that death has inflicted on her life, venting her anger and resentment at those around her, bargaining in an attempt to try to change your situation and find a way to be accepted. Indeed, there is also some denial mixed in here and there. The ending of Ghost Cat Anzu will cause disagreements among viewers, as many aspects remain ambiguous, even though the central conflicts are resolved satisfactorily. This is not at all the kind of animation you would expect to see from a Western studio.

Even if you're not a fan of rotoscoped animation, don't let that put you off Ghost Cat Anzu. It's an incredibly strange but entertaining film that, despite seemingly starting out as a silly comedy, proves to be very intelligent and emotionally enjoyable. Karin makes for a compelling and conflicted lead role, ably supported by her charismatic and exotic cat. Recommended for fans of Japanese folklore, “tough” girls, and fart jokes. Nya-ha-ha-ha!