Director Yōko Kuno breaks animation rules in ‘Ghost Cat Anzu’

Not only is it a fascinating collision of different backgrounds, but it also stands out for its use of rotoscoping—filmed first in live action and then interpreted and traced by animators—for both its human characters and the peculiar spirits with whom the protagonist Karin interacts for the majority of the film. Ghost Cat Anzu follows Karin after she moves to the countryside following the death of her mother, staying with her grandfather at his temple. There, she meets Anzu, a cat who has lived for so long he’s become incredibly large and almost humanoid, in other words a bakeneko, a yokai from Japanese folklore. 

We caught up with co-director Kuno at this year’s Tokyo International Film Festival to chat about the film’s approach and how the two co-directors worked together on the film’s dual productions. 

This interview has been edited for clarity and length.

Kambole Campbell: You’ve worked on rotoscoped projects in the past. What lessons did you bring forward from those past projects into working on Ghost Cat Anzu?
Yōko Kuno: Yes, I've been involved in one rotoscope film that was with the director Shinji Iwai.

And the title of the film was The Case of Hannah and Alice. There were a lot of difficulties there. That was the first film that I was ever involved in. At the time, it was very difficult because we had the 3-D animation team, which is a very professional team. But on the other hand, the rotoscope team didn't really have a professional animator there. And at the time I just graduated college, I didn't have any know-how. And then through this project, I learned that there are a couple of rules involved in animation. 

KC: What were the rules?
YK: For example, there would be a company doing just robot anime or maybe if it's like a beautiful idol anime, then it's usually the same people and they have these common rules. They really follow those rules strictly, which is why we're able to create so many of those animations in Japan. But then on the other side of that is that all these animations have a common look to them.

KC: How did you work on making Ghost Cat Anzu feel distinct from such films?
YK: Japanese animators, you know, they're very talented. And for somebody like me that doesn’t have any know-how, it was really good that I was able to learn from them. So for this movie, it's a rotoscope movie, but we created it as we would any other animation. 

One of the main differences would be in the contours of the lines, for example, the hair or the skin. And because of those contours, we were able to create a very soft impression in the look of the movie. 

KC: Seems like you left a lot of room for artists to interpret movements rather than just trace them. I was wondering what this changed about the expression of the film.
YK: I think originally, we had created a live-action movie and then we were depending on the actors to play all the characters. And I believe that the way they played the characters was very attractive in the very beginning. And then also like in the screenplay, even though it looked like an ordinary scene, maybe we'd see these actors playing the characters, it just became so much more interesting. 

And so in Anzu we had real people acting out their characters and other characters like Anzu—for example the frog, which were not human characters. And so we thought that, for example, if there were all these creatures and human beings acting in live-action, and then in a rotoscope, it wouldn’t quite look believable. 

And so that's why in the very beginning we gave directions to the actors to exaggerate their acting styles. I think this contributed to the tension that we were able to make in the animation.

KC: I saw that you had worked on some Crayon Shin-chan in the past. There were sequences in Anzu that made me think of that franchise. So when I read that you had been involved in that I was quite excited. Was there any intentional connection between those two things?
YK: I was involved in five Crayon Shin-chan works, but I was not the director. So I just want to make that clear. But I always loved Crayon Shin-chan as a child. When I was involved in the work, it was two directors working on one Crayon Shin-chan film and then the two directors would have very unique characteristics. For example, one would be in charge of the comedy, the other would be in charge of action. And so in one movie, these different aspects stand out. 

With Anzu, you know, we had a two-director system but here we also said, “Okay, we both have characteristics and let’s allow them to be distinct and not harmonize it.” I learned that from Crayon Shin-Chan. 

KC: How did your collaboration with Yamashita begin?
YK: There was a producer named Kondo-san, who introduced both of us. Kondo-san thought that it would be really interesting if he brought myself and director Yamashita together through the project. We even created a pilot, and then through that figured things out. Yamashita-san is more of a live-action director. I'm more of an animation director, but I did go to his set and he also came to the animation studio. 

But if I was to go on the set for the live-action shoot, then I might be seeing all the actors playing the characters and make some suggestions about how the actor should play the role of the cat. And Yamashita-san also came to the animation studio and he’d make suggestions like, “Why not add this, or add that cut?” So we had our own territories, but we had an even relationship where we could say all these things to each other. 

KC: Were there scenes that you worked on which perhaps best illustrated Yamashita's sensibilities and yours?
YK: When I was seeing the live-action film being shot for reference, there was a scene being shot where Karin and Anzu have an argument, and Karin is so frustrated about her dad, so she starts to blame Anzu. When I was watching that shot and seeing Gotō-san performing as Karin [both live-action and voice performance], I thought that director Yamashita was able to draw out her best facial acting, her best performance.

I really felt that this relied on his experience with live-action films. As for the scenes that I contributed to, it would be the scene where Karin is on her way to Tokyo, but she accidentally falls into a hole in the mountains. And then that's when she starts to have all these memories of a sports day, she and her mother appear in this memory. For that scene, we didn't have it filmed in live-action and it actually wasn't in the screenplay either. I added that scene because through those memories, we have a glimpse of Karin's real character, what kind of person she is. 

KC: A lot of the time when people make rotoscoped films with a live-action shoot like this, I've heard them describe it as it feels like making a movie twice.
YK: I did have that feeling and director Yamashita did too, I think. But for him, he has been a live-action film director and this was the first animation movie that he was involved in. And I remember he was talking about how in live-action films, if the weather is bad, the weather is bad, but in animation, it doesn't really matter about the weather, because you can create good weather.