Directors Kuno Yoko and Yamashita Nobuhiro, along with France-Japan production coordinator Takahashi Shoko, fielded wide-ranging questions at a talk session on October 30 following the screening of Ghost Cat Anzu, playing in the Animation section of the 37th Tokyo International Film Festival. Moderated by TIFF Programming Advisor Fujitsu Ryota, the session got under way after Yamashita explained that the Anzu plushie he was carrying had traveled with him all over the world for screenings of the film.
 
In Ghost Cat Anzu, 11-year-old Karin is left by her deadbeat father to the care of her grandfather, a monk who runs a temple in the countryside. He asks Anzu, a rotund and nonchalant cat spirit, to watch after her and much adventure ensues. While the setup seems similar to another tale of a young girl who moves out of the city and finds friendship and protection from a cat-like spirit, the freewheeling Anzu – who moonlights as a masseuse, plays pachinko in his free time and farts without abandon – is no Totoro. Anzu’s carefree attitude grates on Karin, but she comes to depend on him as his connection to the spirit world gives her hope to reconnect with (and revive) her dead mother.
 
As the guests told the TIFF audience, the production of Ghost Cat Anzu was unconventional for most Japanese animated feature films. Yamashita first directed a live-action version of the film, which was then animated in rotoscope by Kuno. He explained that, while the process allowed him to have some “distance” from the film, he still thinks Anzu is his work and he thought the dual process of live-action shooting followed by rotoscoping was a lot of fun.
 
Kuno, who also directed the animation for Iwai Shunji’s rotoscoped feature film The Case of Hana and Alice (2015), said that shooting in live action allowed the staff to feel the passion of the actors and the atmosphere of the countryside, down to the bugs on their legs. Rotoscoping for Anzu, however, presented unique challenges in that while the cat is very short and round, the actor who played him, Moriyama Mirai, is tall and slim.
 
“We would sometimes stretch Anzu too much,” Kuno admitted.
 
Yamashita’s experience with stories of slackers and marginalized small town folks provides Anzu with his trademark dry humor and whimsy. The film was a co-production between Shin-ei Animation Studio in Japan and Miyu Productions in France, and there was some concern from Yamashita and Takahashi that the humor would not translate when shown to audiences outside Japan. As Kuno explained, however, the film’s jokes garnered laughs from the same places with audiences all over the world.
 
When asked about the experience of working with Japanese and French production staff, Yamashita said that while there were some differences in attitudes toward work, the biggest difference was in the expectations for the film. “The French staff really wanted to make a work their children would see and wanted to avoid violent or sexual scenes,” he explained.
 
This came home to him in a screening of Anzu at Cannes, where 150 rowdy children were in attendance. When Karin and Anzu enter the various hells of jigoku – scenes that many Japanese children are familiar with – the depictions were apparently scary to the French children in attendance. “It gave me the impression that the film we made was maybe more for adults,” Yamashita said.
 
Anzu features lush, detailed background art of the sleepy fishing village where the film takes place. Takahashi noted that there were also some worries that the French staff would not be able to translate the feel of these environments, but such fears were misplaced.
 
Kuno enthused how the international collaboration also provided ideas the Japanese staff would never have conceived of. In one example, she related how art director Julien De Man gently suggested changing the palette of the hachimaki bandanas at a school sports festival depicted in the film, from white and red to a rainbow of colors.
 
“With these cultural differences, every meeting became so much fun [because we could] do beautiful things that we weren’t accustomed to,” Kuno said.
 
Talk Show: Animation
Ghost Cat Anzu
Guests: Kuno Yoko (Director), Yamashita Nobuhiro (Director), Takahashi Shoko (France-Japan Coproduction coordinator)