Think the Teaser for ‘The Boy and the Beast’ Looks as Good as ‘Summer Wars’?

You have good reason to get excited about this 30 seconds of animation, and narration you probably don’t understand. Mamoru Hosoda has already directed a trio of acclaimed animated films: The Girl Who Leapt Through Time (2006),        Summer Wars (2009), and Wolf Children (2012) – impressing critics and audiences with gorgeous visuals, memorable characters, and themes about friendship and family that don’t come off as tired or trite. Based on its brief trailer, The Boy and the Beast looks like another hit for Hosoda – visually, at least.

The Girl Who Leapt Through Time is a semi-adaptation/semi-sequel of/to a novel by Yasutaka Tsutsui (Paprika) about a high schooler who learns she can time travel. Summer Wars is the story of an intelligent young man and a large, eccentric family who work together to save a virtual world (and the real world) from a rogue artificial intelligence. Wolf Children is about the difficulties single mother faces raising two half-werewolf children.

Regarding the plot of The Boy and the Beast, Hosoda said:

The movie is a training story about a boy who was separated from his parents and becomes a disciple of a bakemono (supernatural creature). It’s going to be a traditional yet novel story.

Apart from the trailer and the director’s brief synopsis, not much else is known about the film. However, Hosoda does plan to release it next June.