“Summer Days With Coo”

"Summer Days With Coo"

Nov 14th, 2008

I know nothing about "Summer Days with Coo" beyond what the trailer and description below tell me, except that it's playing later this month at the Waterloo Festival for Animated Cinema in Ontario. Still, that's all I need in order to have decided that one way or another, I'm getting a copy of this. It's probably geared for young ones a little older than my daughter currently is, but that doesn't mean The Wife™ and I can't watch it now and save it for later family viewing!

Small-town boy Uehara Koichi finds a curious-looking stone at the riverbank one day and takes it home. After he washes off the stone, much to Koichi’s surprise, little arms and legs pop out, and then a green head. It turns out that Koichi has brought home a young kappa (a river troll, in Japanese mythology) that has been dozing for three hundred years.

Koichi names the timid, mischievous creature Coo – after the first sound it makes – and the Ueharas happily welcome the kappa into their chaotic family. Koichi and Coo become good friends, but Coo could not adjust to the Tokyo lifestyle and begins to miss his family. On a hot summer day, Koichi and Coo decide to go on a road trip to find his own kind.