If you like Hayao Miyazaki, you’ll love this nugget of Japanese animated humor

What are you doing?

Aquino is indeed an apprentice at a special department store: the customers there are all animals. Whether they’re small or big, furry or feathered, Aquino works hard to accommodate their every request…even the most outlandish.

Recommended from 6 years

Welcome to Hokyoku Department Store! From December 6, enter this beautiful and colorful brand where customers are animals served by humans. Previewed at the 2023 Annecy International Animated Film Festival, the animated feature received immediate acclaim from the public and critics alike for its aesthetic as polished as the film’s story.

If Japanese animated cinema doesn’t have to prove itself after the release of genre masterpieces and the unparalleled popularity of Hayao Miyazaki – as evidenced by the success of his latest film – The Boy and the Heron – Yoshimi Itazu is going to do so too. name in this landscape. After collaborating with the famous director of Spirited Away, the man who animated Miss Hokusai in 2015 opens the curtain this year on Le Grand Magasin, his first production in which he has brought all his knowledge.

Adapted from Tsuchika Nishimura’s manga, Department Store Concierge, recently published in France by Éditions du Lézard Noir, the film includes all of Yoshimi Itazu’s inspirations. With a light story that can appeal to little ones, it offers a critical discourse on the relationship between humans and animals and over-consumption. In this way, the filmmaker points to the consumers of the world and its destructive excesses, while managing to surprise and make us laugh with his exciting world. A gem to watch with the family and on the big screen from 6th December 2023.