There’s a famous Japanese fairy tale (otogi banashi), Urashima Tarō (浦島 太郎), which “ChaO” reminded my husband and I of. “ChaO” brings this tale into a future and adds few twists along the way for a  happy ending.

In the fairy tale, a young fisherman rescues a sea turtle. The sea turtle rewards him by taking him beneath the sea to the Dragon Palace (竜宮城、ryūgū-jō). He is treated like visiting royalty and entertained by the princess (otohime) . After three days, he asks to return to see and take care of his mother. Although otohime doesn’t want him to leave, she allows him to leave, but gives him a box (tamatebako), but warns him, he must not open it.

Upon returning to his village, he discovers much has changed and his mother nowhere to be found. He doesn’t recognize anyone. When he reveals his name, the villagers say there was someone by that name who vanished a long time ago. Instead of three days, he was gone for three hundred years and opening the box, a small cloud is released and causes him to age. He can’t return home, but he also can’t return to the Dragon Palace.

“ChaO” is from Studio 4˚C. If you’ve seen the award-winning 2006 “Tekkon KinKreet you’ll have an idea of the style and they also did the anime adaptation of the light novel “All You Need Is Kill.”

The tale begins in a world where merpeople and human beings co-exist. We’re following  Juno, (Shuns Ōta), a rookie reporter, who is late for his assignment–much to the displeasure of his editor (Anna Tsuchiya), but may be on to a bigger scoop. He begins to interview an ordinary -looking man, Stephan (Ouji Suzuka)  working on a much smaller ship than the one he missed boarding.

Flashing back to the past, we learn that Stephan used to work for a shipbuilding company in Shanghai under President Shi (Ryōta Yamasato). He meets a princess from the merpeople kingdom and from her long and complicated name, he chooses two syllables, “ChaO.” She proposes to him and together, the married couple must navigate the cultural differences between the world of the sea and this futuristic world. While Stephan is puzzled by ChaO’s ardor, he’s also caught between his earthly culture, his boss’s ambitions and the socio-political implications of marrying into merfolk royalty. He has King Neptunus, ChaO’s father, as well as the merfolk ambassador Omede (Cookie!) to contend with.

ChaO has Maibei (Kavka Shishido) to help her acclimate to life on earth although King Neptunus notes ChaO isn’t yet comfortable enough to appear often in humanoid form.

Stephan isn’t without ambition. He has an inventor friend, Roberta (Yūichirō Umehara) and together, they have developed a propeller they call the Air Jet that will allow humans to move quickly through the water without endangering the denizens of the sea.

There will be a happy ending, but visually (character design by Hirokazu Kojima) there’s a lot going on. Director Yasuhiro Aoki guides us through the chaotic and explosive worlds of the sea and land people with a winning screenplay by Saku Konohana that touches upon the conflicts between two different cultures and the sacrifices both must make in order for their union to work. And yet, there are advantages, but not the ones that seem likely at first.

 

The film “ChaO” was released by Toei Company in Japan in August 2025 and won the Jury Award for a Feature Film at the Annecy International Animated Film Festival in 2025. The film screened at the Animation Is Film Festival in Los Angeles in October 2025. It is licensed for distribution in North America by GKIDS.