“Little Ghostly Adventures of Tofu Boy”

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I’m not sure I like the trend of anime going CG, but this 3D children’s film – which opened last April (via Warner Bros.) – looks like Japanese folklore on acid. Gisaburo Sugii’s Little Ghostly Adventures of Tofu Boy is filled with the stuff of children’s nightmares – and will probably never see the light of day in the US.

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    “I’m not sure I like the trend of anime going CG…”

    By– God. It’s finally happening! *horror*

  • hitface

    It looks pretty standard to me… I hope not all Anime goes CG, but I think the way they have been doing CG is pretty interesting.

  • Chris Sobieniak

    “and will probably never see the light of day in the US.”

    Americans STILL haven’t seen this either….
    http://www.cartoonbrew.com/old-brew/stormy-night.html

    Seriously, I would be in mourning if Gisaburo ever passes away. I’m glad the man’s still pumpin’ out classics.

    • cijfer

      Americans can watch it crappily on youtube.

      http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=m7ZdjqWBiuw

      Might not be legal, but they’re not losing money over something they won’t release.

      • Chris Sobieniak

        Best I saw was a “proof-of-concept” English dubbed version an Aussie group made for the main distributor hoping they would accept and use it themselves but it was never to be. But yeah, we have that, but I didn’t feel like giving people hints.

  • tom

    It’s like Pom Poko, but with all the charm and life sucked out of it.

  • http://www.animationinsider.net/ Aaron B.

    Have they ever sold tofu in Happy Meals? I see plenty of merchandizing potential. Fund it.

  • Conor

    “Japanese folklore on acid” is a redundancy, in fact, this even looks pretty toned down for Japanese animation.

    • snip2354

      Indeed. Anyone familiar with Japanese mythology would know what all the spirits in this film are how they normally look. It’s like our idea of ghosts as being transparent window drapes.

  • http://dailygrail.com/ red pill junkie

    If you told me this was the trailer of a new videogame, I would be pretty excited.

  • http://arschblog.blogspot.com Steffi-Alien

    Looks really cute and I love japanese folklore, but I wish it wouldn’t be CGI.

  • http://palais.wikidot.com Jordan Scott

    Plus surely we’ve learnt by now that Gisaburō Sugii is filled with the stuff of children’s nightmares.

    • Chris Sobieniak

      I’ve knew that for a long, long time!

  • Patrick Drazen

    The very first word spoken in the promo is “Youkai”–”monsters”. This reminded me at times of a CGI version of Takashi Miike’s “The Great Youkai War.” Only cuter–much cuter. And it’s nice to see the Tokyo Sky Tree begin to replace Tokyo Tower in all those anime, from “CLAMP Campus Detectives” to “Tenchi Muyo in Love” to “Please Save My Earth”. Hope it has an equally long and honorable life.

    • Chris Sobieniak

      And more people come to understand it’s presence and not mistake it as something else (Tokyo Tower often gets confused with the Eiffel Tower I noticed).

      Having seen the trailer, the part I didn’t expect to see or thought was possible the way they went every extreme with that fart joke (though I’m sure someone over here will top that).

  • Chris Sobieniak

    One thing about the transition to CG for many Japanese productions is whether or not will they get the lip syncing right. It’s been a time-honored tradition of course that they don’t worry about it at all since they simply post-record the voices after doing the animation, and this goes back quote a long, long time to the days when Tezuka was cranking out his tee vee classics for the small screen. What I was concern with is the slight disconnection some might get in just noticing that with Japanese voices itself (I’m not talking about foreign dubbing of these things of course). It’s certainly something you have to get past a lot with the usual 2D anime productions but with CG, it’s pretty noticeable.

  • http://www.ghiblicon.blogspot.com Daniel Thomas MacInnes

    Gisaburo Sugii?? I’m sold. The man is a genius. That said, I really don’t want to see anime become just another faceless CGI factory, completely impossible to distinguish from video games or Hollywood movies. I want anime! It’s depressing to contemplate how this artform could disappear once the pioneering ’60s anime generation passes on.