Director – Wataru Takahashi – 2025 – Japan – Cert. PG tbc – 90m
*****
An obsessive becomes fixated on a woman he sees in a park – sweet, romantic drama plays in the Annecy International Animation Festival 2026 which runs from Sunday, 21st June to Saturday 27th June
Giuseppe (voice: Masaya Sano) becomes obsessed with things. It’s just the way he is. His current obsession is singing. So obsessed that he messes up at work. His restaurant boss is basically a good guy who has tried over the years to look out for his employee as he has become obsessed with, in turn, insects, or ice hockey, or sunglasses. Sometimes his patience is stretched to the limit.
One day, he meets a mouse,(voice: Hayato Kakizawa), befriends him, names him Cielo, and invites the little guy into his home. One past obsession was learning languages – Giuseppe chalked up about 15 and picks up mouse language fairly easily. The mouse worries about Giuseppe, whose flights of fancy mean he’s not a particularly grounded individual.
Another day, walking in the park, Giuseppe sees a pretty girl selling balloons, and she becomes his new object of obsession. He spends days in despair as he can’t find her anywhere. Then he tries the zoo, and that’s where she is. He witnesses an accident where she nearly loses her balloons which start to float into the sky: heroically he saves them and returns them to her, but he just can’t bring himself to express his feelings towards her.
He enlists the mouse as a private investigator to find out more about her. Her name is Pechka. She lives in a tiny, unpleasant flat and eats lots of apples.
Pechka (voice: Moka Kamishiraishi) doesn’t speak his language, but he recognises hers (Russian?) and can talk with her with no language barrier. Attempting the perfect present, he gives her apples. She is delighted, but further investigations by the mouse let him know that she only ears them because she’s poor. It turns out she’s in debt to a gangster named Twist (voice: Takahiro Yamamoto) because she’s been trying to pay off her mother’s medical bills. Giuseppe pays off her debt, and also visits her mother (voice: Nana Mizuki) in her care home, curing her of her ailments by encouraging her to sing and getting her to wear dark glasses.
On another occasion when he and Pechka are out together, she thinks she recognises a man she knows in a crowd, but it turns out to be someone else, not Tatan. This sets Giuseppe off on an investigation of the mysterious man, who turns out to be a teacher keen on coaching kinds at ice hockey. He starts dressing up as the man, appearing outside her window by means of a ladder…
It’s not obvious where this is going (unless, perhaps, you’ve read the book on which it’s based, The Obsessed by Shinji Ishii, 2001). The film’s construction for the most part commendably avoids all the elements that make so much anime so similar (there is a brief background at one point showing smoking chimneys, where the smoke is static; not to mention the brief moment where the camera zooms in on momentarily doe-like eyes) and feels much more European in its beautifully beguiling visual design which perhaps suggest an admiration for 1960s Italian animator Bruno Bozzetto.
However, it’s not 100% clear where the story is supposed to be set, even given a sequence when Tatan (voice: Toshiyuki Morikawa) is on a ski-lift looking after his school’s hockey team – Giuseppe is an Italian name, yet the architecture of the city in which he lives looks distinctly French, possibly Parisian. Then, of course, because it’s a Japanese production, the characters (apart from Pechka) speak Japanese, and the hero’s deferential attitude to relationships feels very Japanese – although tongue-tied translates into any culture. Not that any of that matters here, apart from the story’s and the film’s universal appeal.
The narrative also incorporates songs into its narrative which technically makes it a musical, although since the character here actually loves singing, this aspect feels more like part of a character study than the genre trappings of a musical. The songs themselves are enjoyable enough. That said, the piece overall achieves a similar sense of joie de vivre to the first three quarters (i.e. not the miserable ending) of very different musical The Umbrellas of Cherbourg (Jacques Demy, 1964).
A real gem which transcends the culture that produced it, this deserves to find a wide international release.
The Obsessed plays in the Annecy International Animation Festival 2026 which runs from Sunday, 21st June to Saturday 27th June.
Trailer: