The Boy and the Beast (Bakemono no ko)

‘For a nine-year-old boy, his world comes crashing down after his mother is killed in a car crash and, since the divorce, all he has left of his father are photographs. He wants nothing to do with his wealthy guardian and flees into the anonymity of the streets of Tokyo, where, amidst the maze of alleyways and street corners, a second world opens up: The boy stumbles into the hidden city of Jutengai, the kingdom of animal monsters, which is home to more than 100,000 creatures that resemble humans from a distance but, when viewed up close, bear the features of dogs, deer, cats, pigs or other four-legged animals. As is customary in fairy tales – and not uncommon in Shintoism, Japan’s main religious pillar – the world of the supernatural and the here and now intertwine. (…) It is an impossible task to pin this anime down to a single genre or category. With abandon and fearlessness, it draws on Western fables, literary classics such as ‹Moby Dick›, Far Eastern parables, science fiction, fantasy and martial arts. The Boy and the Beast is, on the surface, a raucous comedy, yet at the same time an intense psychological drama when it comes to the search for identity of a child and, later, a teenager with an adventurous socialisation story.» (Jörg Gerle, filmdienst, Oct 2025)