The Making of 'Chie the Brat'

On Isao Takahata's underrated feature film.

A still from Chie the Brat (1981)

Happy Thursday! It’s time for a new issue of the Animation Obsessive newsletter — all about Chie the Brat, the 1981 feature film by Isao Takahata.

This one’s off the beaten path. For all Takahata’s fame as a director and producer, for all the success he had with projects like Heidi and Only Yesterday (1991), his Chie movie never rose to quite that level. It wasn’t a giant hit in theaters; it hasn’t gotten a wide release in most countries. We’ve never found an official English version for sale.

But Chie is special, and worth discovering. It’s a comedy about a girl (Chie herself) who lives on the rough side of Osaka with her good-for-nothing hustler of a father. There’s no sweeping story — nobody saves the world. As animator Yasuo Otsuka said, “There are no superheroes, and it’s not an action-adventure or a fairy tale.” It isn’t a “gag cartoon,” either.¹ It’s immersive, low-key, goofy and touching, all in one film.

Otsuka worked on Chie — at the time, he was renowned for animating on Lupin the Third and many other projects. Here, he was one member of a world-class team. They produced this great film (which runs upward of an hour and a half) in a few months. How? Why? That’s what we’re exploring today.

Here we go!