Ghost Cat Anzu

Karin’s widowed dad Tetsuya has left her at the Sousei-ji temple, where her monk grandfather lives. Tetsuya owes ¥1 million to some ruthless loan sharks and has promised to return by the anniversary of her mother’s death. Furious and dejected, Karin finds a sympathetic ear in Anzu: a farting, Hawaiian-shirt-rocking, six-foot-tall ghost cat who walks on his hind legs, uses a flip phone and tootles around town on a moped, working as a masseur. These unlikely buddies set off to find Karin’s hapless dad, but instead, the God of Poverty offers to reunite Karin with her mum – if she’s willing to flush herself down a toilet to hell.

Premiering at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight, this anime might recall Hayao Miyazaki’s Spirited Away but experiments more radically with tone and medium. Shot with real-time person tracking and motion capture, and sound-recorded live on location, the film was then rotoscoped to melt the real world into Japan’s fantastical kami realm. The matter-of-fact way Karin rolls with her badass new friend invites audiences to embrace the weirdness.

Japanese language with English subtitles.