ChaO

Director Yasuhiro Aoki decided to set his first feature-length anime not in Japan, but in Shanghai. And what a fantastical Shanghai! In the near future, humans and merfolk live together harmoniously in the sprawling Chinese metropolis, with spectacular infrastructure serving both communities.

And that’s not the only spectacular thing about Aoki’s Shanghai. Houses, streets, neighbourhoods and vistas, seen from all possible angles, are all awesomely intricate, full of vivid details, little visual gags and (mer)people of all shapes and sizes. Around seventy percent of which was animated by hand. It’s deliberately overwhelming, Aoki stated: it’ll be worth watching twice.

This feeling of being overwhelmed is exactly what overtakes mermaid princess ChaO when she tries to navigate the teeming urban masses. But hey, she has no choice, as she unconditionally loves Stephan, who has also declared his undying love for her. Just one small problem: Stephan has no idea what she’s talking about. And when ChaO feels unaccepted, she transforms from a mermaid into an enormous (and enormously cute) fish.

This winner of Annecy’s Jury Award, an unmistakable creation of the studio behind Mind Game (2004) and Tekkonkinkreet (2006), is a celebration of movements, from ChaO’s water-based hairdo to slapstick-like action scenes. Meanwhile, the jam-packed story never pauses – whilst smoothly skipping over a few plot holes – to eventually embrace the same truth that inspired The Little Mermaid, 1989, Ponyo, 2008, and Lu Over the Wall, 2017: ultimately, it is love that will help us transcend our differences.