Summer Days with Coo


Summer Days with Coo is a 2007 Japanese animated film about a kappa and its impact on an ordinary suburban family, written for the screen and directed by Keiichi Hara based on two novels by Masao Kogure.

Reception

The film won the Best Animation Film award at the 2008 Mainichi Film Awards and was nominated for Best Animation Film at the 2008 Japanese Academy Awards, and for Best Animated Feature Film at the 2007 Asia Pacific Screen Awards. It also won the Grand Prize for Animation at the 11th Japan Media Arts Festival and the Feature Film category at the 2008 Tokyo Anime Award.

Plot

A small, lone kappa miraculously survives over 200 years into modern day Tokyo, Japan when he is found by young Kōichi. "Coo" who is secretly adopted by the whole family, faces a tragic past and the present's challenge of living in a dramatically changed environment, searches with his new human friend for places not invaded by people hoping to find any remaining of his kind. When this intelligent "water spirit" draws the popular attention of the whole city upon being discovered and then confronted with his past, it forces him to take action and make an ultimate decision, in order to preserve his kind, inner peace and well being in today's harsh world.

Characters

There are other Japanese mythical creatures appearing in the movie:
Over a decade after its debut, the film became widely available in a native English-speaking region for the first time when, in the United States and Canada, it was released direct to home video on January 21, 2020 by GKIDS.