News

Cat Soup Premiere at BAAF

The Big Apple Anime Fest (BAAF) has announced that they will host the "World Premiere" of Tatsuo Satō's Cat Soup (Nekojiru-sō). Despite being billed at the "World Premiere," Cat Soup has already been released on DVD in Japan and has screened at numerous film festivals around the world, including Montreal's FanTasia Film Festival where it won the award for Best Short Film in 2001. Cat Soup was also honored with the Excellence Prize at the 5th Media Arts Festival, held by Japan's Agency for Cultural Affairs in 2001.

Excerpts from Press Release:

Cat Soup is a unique anime, based on a serial manga called Nekojiru Udon in GARO in the early 1990's. It is about two kittens, Nyata, the brother, and Nyaako, the sister. One day, Nyata sees that Nyaako is walking away with Death. Although he tries to save his sister, Death takes half of her spirit. Nyata goes shopping with his lifeless sister; however, both of them find themselves lost in wonderland; the Big Circus of Whales, a creepy mansion, in the desert, and in the garden of tin. Will Nyata and Nyaako safely finish shopping? And will Nyaako ever recover?

Mr. Sato discussed his experience with the film's production: "Cat Soup is based on the original story Nekojiru Udon. I made free use, however, of images that came to mind, so that the animation turned into a kind of collage. This infantile approach is no doubt largely responsible for the strangeness of what seems to be a coherent story line, but isn't. Digitalization has made it possible for small numbers of people to employ original processes to produce commercial animation. The TV animation industry abounds with "cut-corner" techniques; you only need to change that approach just slightly to come up with films like Cat Soup. No matter what processes are used, the spirit of animation--making pictures move and bringing things to life--remains the same."