A young preteen find adventure with a bold cat-like being? That sounds familiar and those familiar with Doraemon (1969-1997) will seem some resemblance, but the animated feature “The Ghost Cat Anzu” isn’t about robots from the future. Based on a manga by Akashi Imashiro, the film is an uneven tale about adventure and friendship in a small town where strange beings from Japanese folklore are part of everyday life.

Translations are tricky. In the case of  “The Ghost Cat Anzu” (化け猫あんずちゃん) it’s misleading to translate bakemono (化け物) or in this case bakeneko (化け猫) as “ghost.” A bakemono is a type of yōkai (妖怪), or strange creature. 

Shinji Imaoka’s script is episodic, but the overall theme a young girl coming to live in a new place and accepting the companionship of a bakemono. Bakemono is not a ghost, but a changeling, something that has changed. Bakemono are a type of yokai. The Chinese characters suggest change or transformation. Bakemono are not the spirit of a deceased animal or human which would be yūrei (幽霊). Cats, foxes, tanuki (raccoon dogs) and badgers are thought to have the ability to shapeshifter into humans. In Japan, there’s even a Bakeneko Festival.

• Bake Neko (Supernatural Cat) Festival 
• The Kagurazaka Bakeneko Festival – Become a Cat and Join the Parade
• Kagurazaka Bakeneko Parade

In this case, the preteen is an 11-year-old girl, Karin (voiced by Noa Gotō in Japanese and Evie Hsu in English), who is left with her paternal grandfather . Her widower father, Tetsuya (Munetaka Aoki in Japanese and Andrew Kishino in English), is in debt to loan sharks and originally came to ask his father for money. When his father, who lives at a temple, refuses, Tetsuya leaves Karin at the temple, promising to return on the anniversary of the death of Karin’s mother.

Of course, he will not. At the temple, Karin meets Anzu (Mirai Moriyama in Japanese and Jason Simon in English), who was originally her grandfather’s cat, but was he really ever a cat? He’s too old, too big and too much like a human. He walks on two feet, uses a cellphone, rides a moped and works as a masseur. He also gambles. Anzu is friends with two local preteen boys and has yōkai friend as well. Karin is depressed at first, but eventually sets out with Anzu to Tokyo when her father fails to return on the set day. In Tokyo, Karin initially just hopes to visit her mother’s grave. Aided by the God of Poverty (Shingo Mizusawa in Japanese and David Goldstein in English), Anzu and Karin will go to the land of the dead where she will learn something about her father and meet her mother and attempt to bring her mother back to the world of the living.

The film used live-action recording to rotoscope, but this rotoscoping doesn’t attempt to be realistic, leaning more into a two-dimensional anime look. From the trailer, you can see that the cat in question doesn’t look like a real cat nor a real person nor a person made-up to look like a cat from the famous musical “Cats.”

Despite its meandering, the film has a certain charm. The world of the supernatural or strange creatures is not filled with wonder, but rather ordinary. Anzu is more like a middle-aged man who doesn’t want to find steady work and still lives rent-free. His friends from the forest seem to all be bachelors without the worries of a family to support. In someways, Anzu seems almost a stand-in for her often-in-debt father and while this gives a reason why Karin fits into this world, in this small countryside village, she also gains friends her own age and a sense of stability that her father hasn’t provided.

While Doraemon’s human companion, Nobita Nobi, has a family, including a younger sister, and friends, it is through Anzu, Karin gains new friends and family. In this animation, the yōkai become familiar archetypes from everyday life. Even though the title in English uses the word “ghost,” this is less about the scary kind or even the friendly Casper kind and more like ordinary people like CBS’ “Ghosts” as kind of ghost.

“The Ghost Cat Anzu” screened at the Animation Is Film Festival in Hollywood and received limited release in the US on 15 November 2024. Reviewed in Japanese with English subtitles.