Yahoo Lifestyle ‘Ghost Cat Anzu’ Filmmakers Discuss Balancing Grief, Humor And Unique Animation To Create A Heartwarming Tale
Since its debut at the 2024 Cannes Film Festival in the Directors’ Fortnight category, Ghost Cat Anzu amassed online buzz for being one of the most uniquely designed and entertaining animated films of the year. Co-directed by Nobuhiro Yamashita and Yōko Kuno and written by Shinji Imaoka, based on Takashi Imashiro’s manga of the same name, Ghost Cat Anzu centers around a young girl named Karin (Noa Gotō) who is left in the care of her grandfather when her father abandons her to fix his gambling debts. While living at the temple, she encounters a crass, but helpful, ghost cat named Anzu (Mirai Moriyama). Their budding-heads relationship leads to a series of hijinks as they encounter other quirky spirits in their rural town who seek to help Karin find her mother in the afterlife.
Alongside its unique storyline, the film also is a French-Japanese co-production between Shin-Ei Animation and Miyu Productions. It was first made as live-action then rotoscoped into animation, while still retaining the voice acting of the live-action recording sessions.
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Here, Deadline talks to Yamashita, Kuno and Imaoka about the magical process of making Ghost Cat Anzu.
DEADLINE: How did you all come across this project, and what stood out about the Ghost Cat Anzu story that made you want to adapt it?
NOBUHIRO YAMASHITA: This project came about when [Keiichi] Kondo told me about eight or nine years ago that he wanted to make an animation project using rotoscoping. What was alluring about the manga is that Anzu is a temple cat and a ghost cat. He helps people. But the way in which he helps people is a little weird, odd, or very loose and relaxed, and I thought that was interesting to me.
YŌKO KUNO: Kondo had also approached me with this project. I knew him from working on my previous project, The Case of Hana & Alice, where I did rotoscoping animation. Kondo told me he was working with Yamashita and asked if I would like to be involved. But the thing about this manga is that we generally like [Takashi] Imashiro’s manga. However, Ghost Cat Anzu is very different from his other works because he usually draws manga for adults. But this one was made for kids. It’s mysterious and different. There’s a particular way of cuteness about Anzu, too. He’s very loose, and he doesn’t care. He’s nonchalant, but he’s very fun. So, when I heard about this project, I knew it would be a lot of work, but it’ll also be fun.
SHINJI IMAOKA: This is actually my first time writing for an anime film or anime in general. So then, likewise, Kondo approached me to work on it, and I’ve always been a fan of Imashiro. So, then I was like, “Oh, this is a rare opportunity. I need to do whatever I can to take it and make it work.”
DEADLINE: Imaoka, you’re mostly known for Japanese Pink films that contain adult content. Was it challenging for you to write for children? There is some fun adult humor in this film.
IMAOKA: Yes. This is my first time writing for something made for kids. At first, I didn’t really know what to do [laughs]. But I do have children. One of my kids is around the same age as Karin. So, then I had the experience of dealing with children and it’s about family. So, I had a lot to think about in terms of family themes. Even though Karin and Anzu are a made-up family, they are a [found] family. I thought this was something I could do, and then I made it work. Of course, with no sexy scenes or anything [laughs].
DEADLINE: Kuno, you received a live-action version of the film from Yamashita. What were some challenges in turning it into animation?
KUNO: When Director Yamashita was filming the live-action scenes, I tried to go to the filming days as much as I could. I was watching Director Yamashita give directions to the actors, and I saw the actors working on everything in real-time. And then, Director Yamashita would come to me and say, “Oh, I am thinking about doing this. How would it look in animation?” etc. So, we did have these discussions all along while we were filming. That way, I knew that I could turn this into animation.
My experience on The Case of Hana & Alice helped because when I worked on that, we did most of the filming of the actors in a studio or a gymnasium. But then I saw that it was easier for the actors to just be in the location to act. So, all the live-action scenes were acted in location for this film. Then, it was easy for me to imagine what it would look like in animation when I was going to rotoscope it. The biggest challenge was creating [the forest bird-like sprites] Pi-Pi chan. We had an assistant director have a ball on a stick and then act it out. It was really the hard work of the animators who made that happen to make it work for us.
DEADLINE: Talk more about the unique animation style for the film. Karin has more traditional features; the two boys are drawn with limited facial details, and the animals have their own humanoid look.
KUNO: We just based the characters off their manga counterparts. For the original characters, we were free to do what we wanted. But we took the actual live-action actors’ characteristics and likenesses and then incorporated that into creating the characters. For Karin and Karin’s parents, they have a more modern anime design. But I think where the setting is, it’s a very relaxed atmosphere in the town that felt foreign to us. So, then, I didn’t want Karin to blend in too much with this foreign, relaxed town. So that’s why we made her more modern, if that makes sense.
DEADLINE: Though the boys are recurring characters in the manga, you all focused the story on Karin as an original character. Talk about why you decided on making her the main story and how you built her character as this nontraditional anime girl.
IMAOKA: The original manga have mini stories that have their own arcs that end. It’s mainly about the residents who live in this countryside, but it’s just one story or one chapter and it’s over. So, to make this into a movie, we needed a plot and backbone of the movie throughout. So, we’re like, “OK, well how about if we have someone coming in from the city to this weird countryside?” I thought that it would be interesting to have this a little bit manipulative, spoiled adolescent girl coming to this town and then there’s this huge cat who’s like a middle-aged man just walking around.
DEADLINE: What was a scene that you didn’t think would work while making the film, but upon seeing it ended up resonating more than you thought on screen?
YAMASHITA: The going to hell car chase scene. I had doubts because [this didn’t happen in the live action cut] it was original in the animation. But specifically, in regards to hell and the hell hotel. When I was filming at a hotel in the countryside, I was like, “Does this look like hell? I’m not really sure because I can’t imagine it.” But then Kuno assured me that she’d make it work and she did [laughs]. She made it look really good because she incorporated parts that were taken from live action, but then also added stuff that made hell have an original, distinct look. The car chase scene too… I threw it all to Kuno and left her to work on and she made it work, spectacularly [laughs].
KUNO: The climax, where Karin’s mom and the Lord of Hell are talking, it’s supposed to be this really tension filled scene and his face gets darker and darker. But when you look at the whole of the scene, it’s a normal conversation. So, at the climax, I had my doubts because normally in animation when there is a big moment there should be different cuts and anime type effects happening, but no they’re just having a normal conversation and it’s literally just his face getting darker. I was really worried if it would work as the big scene and the climax. The acting really shone through in that scene. Also, we were able to add texture to make it look like an oil painting and I think that left an impression too. I was worried at first, but when it was completed it’s now one of my favorite scenes.
IMAOKA: In the end, I originally had it where Karin would just go back home with her dad. Everyone from the town was waving at her, and then Karin, because she’s a sassy spoiled brat, would say something like, “I’m never going to come back to this shitty town.” That was the ending [laughs]. But then the French side of the production, they read it and were like, “Wait, Karin’s going to go home with this good-for-nothing piece of shit dad? That’s too sad for her.” So, then he changed it. But in the end, it came down to showing her growth [throughout her journey]. I think it came out really well.
DEADLINE: This film deals with grief and levity. How did you try to balance that along with making sure you got these more serious themes across about working through loss? And has the audience been receptive to that?
KUNO: For me personally, the themes that I thought about was that this is a mysterious story about a girl growing up. I thought it would be a very simple but complicated movie. That’s what I was thinking about when I was going to work on it, but when the sound director came to me and he was telling me like, “I want to add in these sounds that makes audiences feel good about this movie,” I realized then that there was so much value in this being a feel-good movie. In regard to fan reaction, usually when it’s a Japanese animation or film, when we show it to different countries, usually the reaction is a little bit different. What Japanese people think is funny, foreign audiences don’t think are funny. Then when scenes are not supposed to be funny for the Japanese audience, they would be laughing. So, the reaction is always different. But with Anzu, surprisingly worldwide, all the reactions, we got the same reactions where they’re supposed to laugh, where they’re supposed to feel sad. That was very interesting to me.
YAMASHITA: As a director, Karin is important to me. Her growth, as the movie progresses was important. Karin is manipulative. She lies, she’s not the greatest kid in the world or anything, but she lost her mom. And then her dad is a piece of shit. So, I think as a kid, she should have been purer, but she couldn’t. That’s what contributes to how her personality is in the movie. But in the end, she says, “Anzu-chan” with a smile, and that’s what I wanted to depict the most. Because I think in that moment, she’s truly a pure kid. I was putting too much emphasis on Karin, so Kuno was like, “Can you think more about Anzu?” But I think Anzu is such a loveable, relatable character. He’s so easy to be accepted by the audience. Karin needed to have that strength to be appealing to the audience. That was important to me.
IMAOKA: I saw the movie in theaters with my daughter and the scene where Karin is going towards the Lord of Hell, my daughter was bawling, crying her eyes out. So, when I saw that, I was like, “Oh, I did a good job.” [Laughs].
[This interview, conducted through an interpreter, has been edited for length and clarity]
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