“Monkey Quest,” Toei Animation’s ambitious new production sneak peeked Monday at Annecy, was born from a simple question, says producer Yoshi Ikezawa.
”[Producer] Joseph Chou and I asked: How can Japanese anime reach the same level of mainstream awareness and emotional connection that major U.S. animated films have achieved with global audiences?”
For Ikezawa and Chou, the true strength of anime lies in its distinctive characters. “Anime has an incredible ability to create characters that audiences carry with them for many years,” Ikezawa told Variety before the Work-in-Progress unveil of “Monkey Quest” at Annecy.
For this, they approached Naoto Oshima, the original character designer of the iconic video game character “Sonic the Hedgehog. “He began developing a concept inspired by the legend of ‘Journey to the West’ and he brought us the original story idea and characters” that Oshima hoped “could carry the spirit and energy of anime, while also becoming a global family adventure,” Ikezawa recalls.
The film, currently in post-production, follows the 12-year-old girl Elle and her 1-year-old brother Adam as they meet Okon (voiced by Adam Devine), a monkey with tremendous power as a legendary guardian of Earth. They face off against the villainous Vex (voiced by J.K. Simmons) in a quest which takes them across wildly different landscapes and even peers into a dimension beyond our own.
