Fantasia Festival Review! Ghost Cat Anzu Is The Japanese Ghibli Garfield
By Caroline Cao | July 31, 2024 | Celebrity & Culture
It’s not that Studio Ghibli doesn’t avoid fart jokes, but Ghost Cat Anzu sure exists on a Ghibli-inspired spectrum but with a dash of scatological humor.
To be clear, Ghost Cat Anzu (directed by Yōko Kuno and Nobuhiro Yamashita) is a recognizable family-friendly slice-of-life in the lovely countryside in the vein of My Neighbor Totoro. It is also a tad cruder.
A widowed father drops his young girl Karin (Noa Gotō) at her grandpa’s home in the countryside. Karin is unhappy, sure that her father won’t keep his promise to attend to the anniversary of her late mother’s death.
Tending to the countryside is Anzu, a humanoid cat spirit in his 30s. He occasionally does jobs for humans, scaring away crowds with fireworks. Everyone knows Anzu. He’s just as ordinary as a neighbor who might rake your leaves for you. He also has a bit of a gambling problem.
A spirit and a troubled child is a recipe for a buddy-buddy sort of adventure, and the film veers into insanity by the third act. The great aspect of this movie is that it doesn’t slip into the maudlin puddles, despite the real undercurrents of grief. Karin and the Ghost Cat are highly convincing characters with their comedic frailties.
Ghost Cat Anzu is familiar territory but just as distinctive and original to be its own spirit. The humans and spirits move with a certain bounce to their actions, true to the model animation.
See here for more info about the Fantasia Festival.
Read more reviews by Caroline Cao.
