Love is love, baby. It don’t matter of you’re black and white, boy and boy, or mermaid and mechanical engineer. ChaO is another one of those Japanese movie ideas that works because it’s animated in Japan. Fish hookup movies in the US only work if Guillermo del Toro makes them, duh.
Ok, ChaO isn’t raunchy. We start with Juno (Shunsei Ota), a journalist living in Shanghai trying to do a story on mermaid/human relations. Yes, mermaids are real, ruled by King Neptunus (Kenta Miyake) trying to negotiate with the above grounders like shipping CEO President Shi (Ryota Yamasato) like any other country. After failing to get interviews with anyone important, Juno stumbles upon his big story: a humble seafarer he finds is the actual Stephan (Ouji Suzuka). Stephan pioneered the first human/mermaid romantic relationship (unwillingly), as Neptunus’s daughter ChaO (Anna Yamada) becomes smitten with him, and wants to marry.
I love Yasuhiro Aoki’s animation style for ChaO. We’re grounded in Shanghai, which looks as great animated as it does in reality, as well as some human characters like Juno and Stephan that look right out of anything we’d see in other films like it. But then President Shi comes out looking like Humpty Dumpty, and Roberta a neo noir Inspector Gadget, taking all our grounding and throwing it out of the way. This is a sneaky genius stroke: before we get to the romance, we get used to the off kilter look of this world, so when eventually ChaO leaves the water to date Stephan, it feels apiece with what we were already experiencing.
All that animated pizazz is layered on top of what is a sweet romcom. The premise is literally a fish out of water. Watching ChaO learn “why you can’t shoot fireworks inside a home” or making “delicious electric eels” for dinner is your standard first date shenanigans getting you to fall in love with your couple. It defintely works for ChaO, who’s earnest eagerness is infectious to anyone who has a heart. Stephan has more growing up to do, but he eventually gets there too, as the story weaves in flashbacks explaining how he became who he is today. Those flashbacks can get a little “plot dumpy,” but they’re decent enough, and write away some of the strange actions/motivations our characters have. Plus, we get a nice little message here and there about environmental protections and the chamelonic nature of corporate executives riding the wind wherever the money is.
You’ll laugh. You’ll cry. You’ll geek out on the cool creatures. If you’re 11-15, ChaO is gonna blow your mind, and hopefully get your creative juices flowing. I hope this is the bridge that eventually leads to Akira, where your mind will DEFINITELY be blown to smithereens…and executed on the street by a mind controlling psychopath.