Tags: blog, film, animation, fantasy, 2025, essential
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday August 28th, 2025
Alrighty Meow
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.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Oh, and Trainspotting. It literally pilfers a scene directly from Trainspotting.
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Tags: blog, tv, comedy, fantasy, 2024
Author: KickingK
Date: Thursday May 30th, 2024
Dead, dead good
The third best thing I can say about Dead Boy Detectives is that if this had been made twenty years ago it would have been one of the most radical pieces of tv of the era. And yet now it’s depictions of same sex relationships feels completely normal. In fact, those relationships are possibly the most ‘normal’ thing about the show. This is a very good thing.
The second best thing I can say about Dead Boy Detectives is the way it handles real world darkness (such as domestic abuse, child abuse, male violence, bureaucratic ‘violence’, homophobia, agoraphobia etc) whilst staying in the framework of a ‘Monster of the Week’ show. It either deals with this stuff head on, via metaphor, or subtly and in the background. There’s a lot going on here, everything feels like it’s about something and the fact that it packs so much in without feeling over stuffed, ponderous or frivolous is a marvel.
And the very best thing I can say about Dead Boy Detectives is that this is just fabulous entertainment. Funny, warm, witty, imaginative, caring. Honestly, the superlatives could keep flowing for pages. The entire cast play their roles to a tee. A special mention has to go to Lukas Gage’s supurrrlative1 Cat King and it’s a wonder that there’s any scenery left at the end after Jenn Lyon has so enthusiastically chewed through it.
Magnificent.
Poster Credit Where to Watch
1. Sorry, not sorry ↩