Tags: blog, film, animation, fantasy, 2025, essential

Date: Thursday August 28th, 2025

Alrighty Meow

A huge stone statue of Buddha. On it sits a fat, goofy, cartoon cat licking an ice lolly, whilst a sullen young girls walks around, also with an ice lolly.

Young girl Karin is abandoned by her dad at a temple where she makes the acquaintance of a ghost cat called Anzu.

The most obvious point of reference for this film is Studio Ghibli. This film borrows heavily from My Neighbour Totoro and Spirited Away¹ with the obvious limitation that it hasn’t got anything like the budget of those films.

But it turns that into a virtue, this is a low budget film about low budget people. The characters are…well they’re…let’s just say: highly flawed.

Karin is a con-artist, always trying to manipulate people for her own gain, or just to be spiteful. She’s very much her Father’s daughter. Anzu is a gambler who wastes the money he does earn and cheats on the bets he makes. He also goes to the toilet where ever he pleases, because he’s a cat.

For the supporting cast there’s: two doofus boys who are dumb-struck by the new, pretty girl; a gullible temple attendant; a depressed god; a tunnelling frog; assorted sad-sack demons; a bunch of boring forest spirits who just hang around and play cards; and a run-down, Japanese town that’s sweltering, borderline melting, in the summer heat.

Everything feels real and personal. It matters because you recognise these people and their lives. Even the depressed gods. It feels like a British kitchen sink drama, with all of its money problems and annoying scrotes. It is exquisitely well observed and extremely funny as a result.

Its depiction of spirituality felt close to revolutionary. Here, spiritual enlightenment isn’t wisdom, or calm or devotion. It’s the willingness to get the crap kicked out of you in a fight you can’t win because your neighbour needs to be stood up for. To have this stated so boldly, so eloquently, is very timely for the world right now.

This film is a minor key masterpiece that deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as any Ghibli film you care to mention. A heartfelt, joyful, beautiful triumph.

A young girl and a large cartoon cat, wearing a head scarf to keep cool, stand outside a railway station. The cat look in awe at the world.

Poster Credit Where to Watch

1. Oh, and Trainspotting. It literally pilfers a scene directly from Trainspotting.
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