The film straddles comedy and drama in equal measure
The dynamics in the story are well-realised by the animation craft.
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Cast:Hiromi Kawakami, Kenta Miyake, Taro Nikuguso, Anna Yamada, Ouji Suzuka, Shunsei Ota, Shishido Kavka, Yuuichirou Umehara
This Japanese animated rom-com fantasy is an ecological fable about a mermaid princess and her love for a human.
The film straddles comedy and drama in equal measure. The screenplay by Saku Konohana and Hanasaki Kino is ambitious enough to explore interspecies relationships, capitalism’s impact on environment, and romance engineered by destiny.
Set in a futuristic world, Shanghai to be precise, the narrative focuses on Stephan, an engineer who works for a ship-building tycoon. In this fantasy world, humans and merpeople co-exist; so, it’s no wonder that Princess Ao Soni Chao Neptunus, also known as ChaO (Anna Yamada), a mermaid, falls in love with Stephan (Ouji Suzuka).
The wonder though is that they have never met before and Stephan is quite clueless.
Stephan dreams of designing something unique and sea life-friendly and feels that his dreams are being throttled. But after ChaO publicly announces her love for Stephan, his dreams get a new lifeline.
It’s an accidental marriage and both have to adjust to the fish out of water situation. ChaO is not presented as a beautiful mermaid, but she is definitely adorable as she blunders on provoking accidents on a serial basis.
Stephan’s grand idea of an ‘AirJet’, which does away with the dependence on blade propellers, is meant to protect merpeople and other sea life. The idea gains traction because ChaO’s family is now involved.
The narrative is presented to us in the form of a fairy tale paraphrased from the book on ‘Human-Merman Relations’. Basically, harried reporter Juno (Shunsei Ota) is recounting his encounter with Stephan and the story of Stephan and ChaO unfolds.
While the central romance feels like a dash of ‘Splash’, there’s much more going for this fantasy love story with an environment-friendly message. The plot is a little more complicated and there’s a certain depth to the telling.
The animation is quite beautiful to behold. The hand drawings and computer-animated line work merge distinctively to generate a series of sequences that are unconventional and unique.
The character designs have a strong edge to them while the backgrounds add life and beauty to the elaborately accented sketch work. The narrative is replete with visual gags and the plotting is pacy and energetic.
It’s an impressive audio-visual experience, with the soundtrack adding distinctive ambient sounds and the visual design styled to be artistically eye-pleasing. The colour scheme and scale make this effort a visual treat of sorts.
The visual design also incorporates jokes that feel zany and are rendered with a finesse that is bewitching.
The art direction by Hiroshi Takiguchi is dense and teeming with life and wonderful elements.
The dynamics in the story are well-realised by the animation craft. Hirokazu Kojima’s character designs showcase ingenuity and re
“ChaO” means to be artfully sketchy and that’s what is achieved here. The finely accented finished product is a testament to the painstaking effort that took the best of seven years to produce.
‘ChaO’ may be familiar classic fairy tale territory but the unique spin in the story, animation quality, the surprising levity of the gags and the pacy plotting keep you enthused throughout.
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