Thread 280263232

Fantasia kicks off in 2 weeks where they'll be showcasing a number of anime films, tv shows, and short works. Anime fans in Montreal may want to check it out.

https://fantasiafestival.com/en/program/nyaight-of-the-living-cat-episodes-1-2-3-4
>Adapting the manga written by Hawkman and drawn by Mecha-Roots, and debuting on Crunchyroll this summer, NYAIGHT OF THE LIVING CAT presents a premise more terrifying than a half-empty food bowl—a virus sweeping the globe, causing anyone who touches a kitty to become one themselves! Executive director Miike and director Tomohiro Kamitani deliver a furry, purring parody of the natural-horror subgenre, an animated cataclysm of cuteness!

https://fantasiafestival.com/en/program/anime-no-bento-2025
>Fantasia’s annual mixed bag of short-form anime works returns! The 2025 selections focus on young, independent anime creators, with student films and crowdfunded productions that are by turns weird, wild, wistful, and whimsical. While all fall within the formal conventions of Japanese anime, each has its own unique style, tone, and character, signalling the arrival of a new generation of anime innovators.

https://fantasiafestival.com/en/film/tamala-2030-a-punk-cat-in-dark
>With TAMALA 2030: A PUNK CAT IN DARK, the mysterious writer/composer/director duo K. and kuno, known together as t.o.L (“trees of Life”), have resumed, recalibrated, and resolved their tale of Tamala, surpassing themselves in their control of the cryptic, complex, and cuddly chaos they’ve unleashed. The Japanese kawaii paradigm of Hello Kitty and Hatsune Miku collides with cabalistic capitalism, cataclysmic prophecy, and the ruptured realities of Lynch, Pynchon, and Philip K. Dick in TAMALA 2030: A PUNK CAT IN DARK, a deviously dreamlike, metaphysical mind-melt of high-fructose, retro-futuristic, paranoid pop-art brilliance.

https://fantasiafestival.com/en/film/chao
>A 21st-century reworking of the classic LITTLE MERMAID, set in a psychedelic, cyberpunk Shanghai, the frenzied, fantastical romantic comedy CHAO is one of two films at Fantasia this summer from that most distinctive and inventive of anime factories, Studio 4ºC (the other is ALL YOU NEED IS KILL). A veteran talent at Studio 4ºC, director Yasuhiro Aoki, whose mile-long resume includes key animation on such properties as SAILOR MOON and PSYCHO-PASS, has previously helmed a segment in 2008’s BATMAN: GOTHAM KNIGHT and the quirky magic-academy anime series TWEENY WITCHES.

https://fantasiafestival.com/en/film/all-you-need-is-kill
>Innovative in its use of gameplay as its narrative basis, and foretelling the wave of time-loop tales that followed it, the Japanese science-fiction novel ALL YOU NEED IS KILL by Hiroshi Sakurazaka was a landmark when it was published in 2004. A decade later, it had been adapted as a manga, and as a Hollywood film with Tom Cruise and Emily Blunt, EDGE OF TOMORROW. It’s taken yet another decade for the kick-ass anime feature it deserves to arrive, but it’s finally here.

https://fantasiafestival.com/en/film/mononoke-the-movie-chapter-ii-the-ashes-of-rage
>After the first film’s sold-out world premiere at last year’s Fantasia, the Medicine Seller is back for another spooky, spectacular adventure as director Kenji Nakamura continues his inspired revival of his pop-psychedelic, paranormal-procedural anime phenomenon, originally a TV series in 2007. The first chapter’s wildly inventive approach to design and technique, immersing the viewer in an overwhelming whirlwind of Edo-period iconography, earned MONONOKE THE MOVIE: PHANTOM IN THE RAIN a Satoshi Kon Award for Best Animated Feature. MONONOKE THE MOVIE: CHAPTER II - THE ASHES OF RAGE is no less daring, dynamic, and visually dazzling. It digs even deeper into the secrets of a paradise poisoned by patriarchal cruelty, where women are reduced to mere vessels, whether for the offspring of their social betters, for their own families’ cynical ambitions... or for the vengeful spirits of others wronged in the past.