Hardcore anime fans are usually well-versed with tv shows and films in the culture-sphere (well, sometimes... most of them rarely venture outside their one or two favourites). But there are always some indepedent films that fly under the radar. One such movie is 2006's "Summer Days with Coo," a family movie I would have never heard of had I not looked up the word of director Keiichi Hara. For some reason, I had in my mind that Sunao Katabuchi, the director of "Black Lagoon," was the man, but I was mistaken. Hara has a long history directing for the "Doraemon" and "Crayon Shin-chan" franchises, before directing his first original film in "Summer Days with Coo," and following up with films like "Colorful" and "Miss Hokusai." Indeed, the man seems to be an iconic anime director of inspiring, but forgettable, films. I probably still wouldn't bother talking about "Coo" if it hadn't been picked up by GKIDS in 2019. It's true: the movie had been ignored by American distributors for over a decade, to never have an English release. My only exposure to it before then was one or two ugly promotional screenshots. I appreciate the opportunity to see it for myself, and it's not the first time GKIDS released older, more obscure titles, but I'm interested to how the discussion came about in the first place. As best, "Coo" is simply fine, but a difficult film to market, especially to children I imagine. The movie revolves around the mythical Japanese creature known as "Kappa," or "Water Spirits." They're a well-known monster, typically sinister, taking the appearance of turtle goblins with a well of water in their heads that gives them strength. "Coo" opens in centuries-old Japan, when a polite Kappa father and his son reveal themselves to a human samurai to plead for the town to not develop the swamp lands where they live. In a drunken and violent rage, the samurai kills the father, and the boy Kappa falls into the Earth in a sudden earthquake. In present day, a Japanese boy digs up a rock and finds the Kappa preserved inside. Upon washing him, he awakens. Able to speak, and being somewhat cute, they call the creature Coo and keep him temporarily as a pet until his strength returns, while searching for any evidence of other Kappa for him to return to, and keeping his existance hidden from local press (smartphones don't seem to be a thing in the movies, but the Internet is, and news of his existance spreads quickly sometime later). The best comparison I can think of is "Stuart Little," the classic English children's novel about an intelligent mouse adopted by a human family, to be treated as a little brother and to live a relatively normal human life, despite his size (and that fact that he isn't a human). Likewise, Coo's intelligence allows him to have a different dynamic from a normal pet, but he can also speak with animals, and occasionally other supernatural creatures when he comes across them. Coo had long been taught to fear humans, and that fear becomes warranted, despite the family who takes him in being generally kind. Most of the events revolve around Coo describing his perspective and memories, learning about modern Japanese culture and lifestyle, and interacting with the boy who found him and his family (made up of a bratty little sister, a loving but neglegent salaryman father, a worrying mother, and their dog). Like "Little," the story ends with Coo ultimately leaving the family to search for his own, a little wiser, with him and everyone grateful for their time together.
Despite the fantasy aspect, the story is fairly mundane, filling scenes with the brother and sister fighting with each other, or the boy's compliance in bullying of a quiet girl in his class. Later, it deals with how inconsiderate the public can be over tabloid news. It's slice-of-life drama, the kind that's painful to watch, without significant purpose other than to witness growth in some of the young characters. That's not to say there aren't fun scenes too. Coo's perspective is refreshing, and it's fun to learn that he enjoys sumo wrestling, and his first time trying alcoholic beer. One act follows Coo and his boy traveling alone to a remote village, highlighting a different side of Japan. The movie is full of detail to the country and its real-life places. These keep the movie bearable, but the runtime is almost 2 hours and 20 minutes long, far longer than most animated films! There's a reason producers insist on keeping most cartoon movies at under 90 minutes, and I've yet to see an animated film over 2 hours that doesn't overstay its welcome. That includes "Coo": a lot could have been cut."Summer Days with Coo" was animated by Shin-Ei Animation, and the result is disappointing. Characters are ugly and lack detail, looking like a manga drawn by a child in motion. Animation of any kind can make poor design interesting, and it's servicable, but generally poor even compared to television anime, let alone feature film production. Coo himself is memorable, a design mix of a turtle and frog with a bird-beak mouth... it's kind of cute, in a disturbing way. A mild personal gripe is that virtually everyone wears ugly sandals throughout the movie, and from Coo's height, we see a lot of gross bare feet and toes (true to life and the average person's lack of footwear sense, yes, and unlikely to bother most other people). There's no English dub to the movie, and the Japanese dub is adequete, but also not noteworthy. The music is beautiful, but also typical, and suffers from some odd directorial choices when paired incorrectly with scenes. For example, when the boy says something nasty to the girl he's bullying early on and runs off, bright and cheery summer music plays. Yes, any adult could guess that his actions came out of his secret crush for her, and this is confirmed later, but the scene itself had absolutely no hint of it, and the music baffled me. This type of thing happens a few times, where the tone of the music simply doesn't match what I'm seeing on screen. "Summer Days with Coo" is a unique family film in the vein of "Stuart Little" or "E.T.," but isn't as good as any of those, spending far too much time on coming-of-age background dressing that only drags things down. It gives a lot of nice detail on Japan as a real place, but so does most anime, and there are dozens of anime films that do it better. The movie is a good introduction to the Kappa myth, but I figure most kids wouldn't have any interest to watch the film, or would fall asleep before it ended (a few scenes of bloody violence contradict the tone of it being a family movie in the first place anyway). The movie might only be worthwhile for completionists, but what would you be completing, when the director's safe style has yet to produce a genuinely interesting film? There's nothing aggressively bad about "Coo," but more than a decade later, there's little reason to make the effort to catch up with it.