GHOST CAT ANZU

This animated feature is based on a manga about a strong-willed girl who finds herself spending the summer alone in a rural village, where she meets a cheeky, rude-but-loveable man-sized cat who is seemingly immortal and does odd jobs around town. When Anzu accompanies her on an adventure to Tokyo to find her father, they instead find themselves breaking the barrier between the living and the dead, with a band of yokai in tow. Shot first with actors whose voices were also captured on location, this adaptation of Takashi Imashiro’s mid-2000s manga of the same name (written by screenwriter Shinji Imaoka) necessitated two directors. Nobuhiro Yamashita (of LINDA, LINDA, LINDA fame) was in charge of staging the interactions between the cast to capture their subtle expressions. Then that footage served as the basis for the rotoscoped animation directed by Yôko Kuno with artists drawing over each frame to transform the images filmed into lively animation with striking painterly backgrounds. The result is a unique and unusual anime that plays like a sardonic cousin to SPIRITED AWAY.