Cowboy Bebop director Shinichiro Watanabe’s short film A Girl Meets a Boy and a Robot released its first key visual.
A Girl Meets a Boy and a Robot is one of two short films screening at The Niigata International Animation Film Festival on March 17. The short film produced by the widely popular studio MAPPA also joins Shuhei Morita’s short film Roots for the TAISU project, a Chinese anthology animation project that intertwines four specific sci-fi stories with directors from Japan, China and New Zealand. Watanabe will join Morita for a talk event discussing their films after the screenings. Watanabe’s A Girl Meets a Boy and a Robot was first showcased at the 2022 Fantasia International Film Festival last July.
What is A Girl Meets a Boy and a Robot?
A Girl Meets a Boy and a Robot is produced by the popular studio MAPPA, known for its work on series such as Chainsaw Man, Attack on Titan: The Final Season and Jujutsu Kaisen. It marks the studio’s first animated short film and Watanabe’s fifth as a short film director. The 20-minute film is about a lone girl who has lost her memory and continues to push on in a world overrun by automated technology with no other humans in sight. While searching for other humans, she meets up with a friendly robot that joins in on the journey. The two eventually discover a young boy doing whatever he can to survive as he seeks out the Crystal of Time in order to connect with the past they’ve so long forgotten.
The cast for A Girl Meets a Boy and a Robot includes a stacked trio that starts with Kouichi Yamadera, the iconic voice of Spike Spiegel from Cowboy Bebop and Beerus from Dragon Ball: Super, as The Robot. Misaki Kuno, best known for her roles as Hawk in Seven Deadly Sins, Faputa in Made in Abyss Season 2 and Frederica Rosenfort in 86 Eighty-Six, also appears in the film as The Girl. Lastly, Yuuma Uchida closes off the trio as the voice of The Boy. Fans may recognize him for his roles as Megumi Fushigiro from Jujutsu Kaisen, Kyo Souma from Fruits Basket (2019) and Kawaki from Boruto: Naruto Next Generations.
This marks Watanabe’s first short film since he directed Blade Runner Black Out 2022 in 2017. His other short films include Kid’s Story and A Detective Story, which were part of the anthology animated series The Animatrix, and Baby Blue (2017). The industry-renowned director is best known for delivering iconic series such as Cowboy Bebop, Samurai Champloo and Space Dandy.
A Girl Meets a Boy and a Robot currently has no release date for any streaming services or theaters.
Source: Twitter
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