There are Japanese folktales that speak of the sea as if it were the afterlife. Time passes strangely at the bottom; a fisherman once rode a turtle straight to the Dragon King's palace on the ocean floor, only to discover that, upon his return to land a few days later, 300 years had passed instead. But, in the deep blue, there's almost always a beautiful princess – and it's this part of the story that the upcoming film ChaO twists like taffy into a romcom.
ChaO is the first full-length film from veteran animator Yasuhiro Aoki, who's worked on everything from Naruto, Digimon, and Neon Genesis Evangelion to Sailor Moon. Time passes strangely at the bottom of the ocean: A GKids representative addresses the audience at a recent premiere at the Japan Society in New York, ahead of the film's Japanese release on August 15, and tells us ChaO took seven years to make. ChaO was apparently assembled using 100,000 hand-drawn frames, and the result is a funny fairytale that comes from love as much as it is about it.
In the future, humans and mermaids coexist like wind and trees. They just need to take care not to step into each other's methods of transportation – a city bus or a 1,000-foot water slide, etc. Under art director Hiroshi Takiguchi (Your Name) and with character design by Panty & Stocking with Garterbelt animator Hirokazu Kojima, these people and merpeople look as alien as colorful root vegetables – bodies like potatoes, turnip heads, stubby beetroot noses.
But protagonist Stephen is windbitten and handsome in that salty kind of way when he tells a journalist the story of how, a long time ago, he married sea princess Chao after fishing her out of the water for the sake of interspecies diplomacy... and so his idea for a reef-safe boat motor could get approved at work.
It's a cutesy cyberpunk interpretation of the myth of Hoori, an ancestor of Japan, who finds and marries the goddess Toyotama-hime after looking for his brother's lost fishing hook – until he discovers her true form is that of a dragon. She retreats to her father's watery kingdom in shame.
But Chao is proud of herself, and I quickly fall in love with watching her be that way.
Like Toyotama-hime, underwater, Chao looks like a woman, though a strange one. Her hair is thick, wild, and blue, like it's made of a whirlpool, and she smiles shyly at Stephen with her lipless, sharkish mouth.
Out of the water, Chao is the cutest thing I've ever seen. The other women at my Japan Society screening and I squeal like newborns each time fat, bipedal koi Chao – who's having a celebratory ice cream cone with her reluctant fiancé Stephen – blushes.
Plump rose petals fall around her at the amusement park, where she has to wear a teardrop necklace Stephen gives her like a tiara, because her neck has too much blubber.
As Chao and Stephen's relationship unfolds, I'm giddy. This is a very different experience from the one I usually have while watching anime. I tend to be frustrated with the fact that women and girls are often sexualized so aggressively, it makes otherwise interesting narratives feel vulgar, like I, as a female viewer, wasn't supposed to witness them.
In contrast, I become more invested in ChaO the longer I observe its title character. She's unbeautiful and clingy as hell, but she's also a devoted wife to Stephen, who's now thoroughly attached to her, even though she tried serving him electric eels for dinner.
It's these details that make ChaO a charming parable, evoking the timeless feel of a Studio Ghibli movie. With its hand-drawn art and a story that, ultimately, highlights the power of understanding, respect, and empathy across men, women, and animals, ChaO is as evocative as Grimm's Fairy Tales.
That's a rare thing. There are only a handful of other films – anime or otherwise – that have been able to pull a candy string of childhood memories from me in this way.
Watching ChaO, I remember summer days reading about kind princesses and talking animals, and women who wanted to protect the planet – and their betrothed – with love. I want more of it.
ChaO does not yet have a North American release date, so you might want to peruse our list of the 30 best anime movies to watch right now.
