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Taiyo Matsumoto's Character Designs for Masaaki Yuasa's Inu-Oh Anime Film Unveiled

Japanese production company Science SARU and production and distribution partner ASMIK Ace unveiled manga creator Taiyo Matsumoto's original character design concepts for INU-OH, the musical anime feature film of Hideo Furukawa's Heike Monogatari: INU-OH no Maki (Tales of the Heike: INU-OH) novel, at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival's online event on Monday.

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This year's festival selected INU-OH for its Work in Progress program.

ASMIK Ace describes the project's story:

INU-OH was a real-life figure, a Sarugaku Noh performer and playwright who was extremely popular in the 14th century. However, he is all but unknown to people nowadays, because very few documents about his life have survived. Now, around 600 years later, this INU-OH project portrays the tales of brotherhood between the legendary Inu-Oh, who vanished from history, and a certain Biwa player, and is full of music and dance sequences.

Masaaki Yuasa (DEVILMAN crybaby) is directing the film. Matsumoto is drafting the original character designs for INU-OH in his second collaboration with Yuasa, who directed the anime of Matsumoto's Ping Pong manga. Akiko Nogi is writing her first anime film after scripting such live-action works as I am a Hero, We Married as a Job!, and Unnatural.

ASMIK Ace is presenting the project at Mifa, the market event tied to the Annecy International Animated Film Festival.

Takashi Yamazaki's Lupin III THE FIRST and Yūta Murano's Seven Days War films are competing in the Annecy's Features category this year. Kenji Iwaisawa's ON-GAKU: Our Sound and Eiji Han Shimizu's True North films are competing in the Contrechamp category.

Science SARU and Masaaki Yuasa's upcoming anime series adaptation of Sakyō Komatsu's Japan Sinks (Nihon Chinbotsu) science-fiction novel is competing in the TV Films category. Isaku Kaneko's "The Balloon Catcher" is competing in the Graduation Short Films category.

This year's physical Annecy International Animation Film Festival was canceled due to concerns about the spread of the new coronavirus disease (COVID-19). Instead, an online version of the festival is being held from June 15 to 30.

Established in 1960, Annecy is the world's oldest and largest animation film festival. Next year's festival will be held from June 14 to 19, 2021 to celebrate the event's 60th anniversary.

Sources: Annecy International Animation Film Festival, Eunyoung Choi's Twitter account, Comic Natalie