Nagagutsu o haita neko

Puss in Boots (1969) is unjustly forgotten by animation fans. It's a charming and funny film, mixing the innocence and appeal of an early Disney fairy tale with madcap slapstick comedy. It's a good kind of old-fashioned, the sort of film which is no longer produced, here or in Japan.

While the human Rose and Pierre are a little one-dimensional, the titular puss in boots Pero is the star attraction. He's so likable and fun to watch; it's no surprise that Toei made him their mascot. The three cat assassins who chase after him and the villain of the piece, Lucifer, are magnificent adversaries.

I don't care if you think a movie from the late 1960s is "too old" for your enjoyment; watch this film! It's like being a kid again.

Fabulous wide screen cartoon feature from the days before Manga and anime had entered common our toon speak. This one was particularly imposing in it's first generation colour with the Japanese track.

Don't expect too much connection to the fairy tale we had thrust on us as kids but the chase down the spiraling INSIDE of the mountain remains printed in the memory after thousands of cheapo kiddie toons have faded.

This one comes from the days of the first Astro Boy series and while it has a style and imagery of it's own, it's not hard to imagine the people who did them downing tea and other substances together out of hours. Note Hayao Miyazaki's credit here. It would be particularly interesting to get to see a collection of his work from this period.

"I've got you and you've got me and that's between the two of us..."

I saw this version of the Puss in Boots tale some 20 years ago. Still can't get the damn song out of my head!

For some reason I still find this version the best of them all. Beats the hell out of anything I can imagine The House the Mouse Built doing...

Anybody have a DVD copy for region 4 available??

Watched as a Recent Miyazaki convert and found this to be a Weak telling of the tale that sacrifices story for singing mice and cut and paste action and style, courtesy of Sleeping Beauty

Firstly, this a poor retelling of the classic fairy tale of a con artist cat with dreams of grandeur. The cat's motivations are never made clear. His cunning skills of con artistry are never established, but you do get 25 minutes of scheming cats and friendly mice singing songs about friendship.

The biggest change here, is that most of the plot of this adaptation revolves around the villain, the devil himself. Yeah, satan. It sounds cool but it wasn't.

Everything about the devil plotline (which takes up most of the films runtime) was so blatantly lifted from disney's Sleeping Beauty, it was hard for me to feel like I was watching something other than a third rate knockoff...

The green faced, black cloaked villain crashing the royal event to threaten the princess, the black and green color palettes, the green fire, the castle fortress with other black and green demonic critters running up and down spiral staircases and towers and draw bridges.

All that is fine as an artistic influence, but this adds nothing to the plot and the animation falls so short compared to the innovative gothic art style of sleeping beauty, it's unfathomable this was In fact made, a whole decade later.

I found the art style strange as well, like a mish mash of traditional anime with a Hanna Barbera cartoon. It felt like two different movies trying to co exist a lot of the time.

I believe that this film is a masterpiece, always exuberant and dynamic, full of wit and clever animation, often as hilarious as a classic Chuck Jones, sometimes as a beautiful as Miyazaki's later work. If you are able to feel at home with this older, slightly more limited style of animation (I, for one, find it lovely and full of character), than I think you will find that this film is even better than some of Studio Ghibli's work-- better, even, than "Lupin III: Castle of Cagliostro" (which borrows heavily from this) or "The Cat's Return." In my view, only Miyazaki's true masterworks ("Nausicaa," "Castle in the Sky," "Spirited Away," "Porco Rosso") surpass this early work, which already beautifully interweaves action and adventure with loony comedy.

Apparently, Miyazaki himself drew much of the long, action-filled second half of the film.

I highly recommend this DVD to everyone: If we do not embrace these cult classics on DVD, they will stop releasing them! Of course, the original Japanese soundtrack is far better, and also restored for superior quality).