Brianna Fox-Priest
December 30, 2024 Ever wish your cat could walk and talk? You may reconsider after seeing this tabby get arrested, spend your allowance on pachinko, and invite a group of spirits over to drink.
Or maybe, this is exactly the friend you need.
Eleven-year-old Karin, after being dumped at her father’s rural hometown with her grandfather and a human-sized, middle-aged cat spirit, is forced to come to terms with her own lingering grief of her late mother and deadbeat father.
In Ghost Cat Anzu a cast of forest spirits become friends and guardians to Karin as she seeks to bust her mother out of the underworld. It’s not a clean resolve like Spirited Away, as all of hell breaks loose, but while there are some disjointed plot points, Karin has her own self-actualization journey.
Fans of folklore and spirits will find a lot of references to Japanese stories and pop culture to enjoy in Karin’s story. I recommend watching the Japanese subtitled version to pick up on various references and fun nuances often lost in translation. There are moments of seriousness, but the comedic relief Anzu embodies is a welcomed feature of the film. One of my favorite moments includes Anzu calling himself “Hachiko” while being arrested.
I can’t help but judge an anime by how its animation style holds up, and a big reason why I chose to watch this film was the enticing animation. Aside from testing my understanding of natural Japanese, the reason I found Ghost Cat Anzu so pleasing is its atmospheric viewing experience.
Ghost Cat Anzu’s animation style is one reason this movie was a hit. The saturated colors mixed with 2D characters against a painterly background make the entire movie eye-catching. It may not register at first while scanning each frame, but this anime feels and looks different. Although animated, its filming techniques are extremely realistic. It’s immersive.
This feeling of being there next to our giant feline pal, Anzu, is most notably thanks to the use of a rotoscoping technique. Rotoscoping is when animation is created from tracing over scenes filmed in real life, this technique effectively syncs up the movement and audio of live-action footage and uses it as a base to create a natural style of animation. The characters have a fluidity to their movements that feels comforting because it actually uses real human movements.
As shown in the trailer, you’re not hearing a soundbite of a motorbike in the background added over voice acting; you’re hearing the voice actors act out the scene and speak their lines in real-time. This is an effective technique that easily made this movie more impressive. Anzu may not be real, but if he were, I’d imagine him to be just as his voice actor Mirai Moriyama portrays him on camera.
I could write a whole review just on the immersive elements, which helped to ground the story’s uniquely spirited plot.
So, should 37-year-old pachinko-addicted cats be trusted to look after angsty teens? Anzu may have questionable morals, but most real cats do. And we still love them all the same.
