At 85, Rintaro is returning to South Korea after 17 years. The Japanese animation filmmaker will attend the 31st Busan International Film Festival, where he will meet audiences alongside four directors from a younger generation of Japanese animation. His return gives Busan’s Japanese Animation Special a significance that goes beyond a festival lineup, bringing together a filmmaker who helped shape the medium’s history and artists who are now helping define where it goes next.
The festival has announced 13 films for its special programme, titled Japanese Animation Special Masterpieces of Madness, Exhilarating Prospects 12+1. The selection spans 100 years of Japanese animation, combining influential classics, contemporary films and one European animated classic. Most of the selected films have rarely been shown theatrically in Korea, with some receiving their Korean premiere at Busan.
Rintaro will visit Busan with Kadowaki Kohei, Katanosaka Ryo, Natsume Shingo and Shinomiya Yoshitoshi. The four filmmakers represent a new generation, creating a meeting point between different eras of Japanese animation.
The programme begins with The White Snake Enchantress, directed by Yabushita Taiji in 1958. It was Japan’s first full-colour feature-length animated film. Based on a Chinese legend, it follows a young man who falls in love with a white serpent that can take human form. Miyazaki Hayao watched the film during his final year of high school and later recalled crying through the night after seeing it.
The selection then moves through important periods in Japanese animation. Yamamoto Eiichi’s Belladonna of Sadness (1973) was an experimental adult work, while Tezuka Osamu’s Phoenix 2772: Space Firebird (1980) brought the creator of Astro Boy to the big screen. Oshii Mamoru’s Angel’s Egg (1985) relies heavily on imagery and symbolism, with little dialogue.
MEMORIES (1995), overseen by Otomo Katsuhiro, returns to Busan 30 years after its Korean premiere at the Busan International Film Festival. The festival will screen its 30th-anniversary digital remaster. Rintaro’s Metropolis (2001) is another highlight. Based on Tezuka Osamu’s 1949 manga, it was directed by Rintaro and scripted by Otomo Katsuhiro, connecting three generations of Japanese animation talent.
Busan then turns toward the future with four works. Natsume Shingo’s ghost end of night will screen before its planned Japanese theatrical release in 2027. Katanosaka Ryo’s Shiranui is a 36-minute original theatrical short from CoMix Wave Films.
Kadowaki Kohei’s We Are Aliens has screened at Cannes Directors’ Fortnight and competed at the Annecy International Animation Film Festival. Shinomiya Yoshitoshi’s A New Dawn became the first Japanese animated feature from a first-time feature director to enter the Berlin International Film Festival’s Competition. Shinomiya also worked on Miyazaki Makoto’s Your Name. and designed the poster for The Garden of Words.
The programme ends with Paul Grimault’s The King and the Mockingbird (1952, 1980), showing that Japanese animation did not develop in isolation. The French classic influenced Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao.
Festival director Jung Hanseok said the programme deliberately sets aside the works of Miyazaki Hayao and Takahata Isao, instead choosing films they admired and that helped shape their own work. The idea is to show audiences the “works behind the works” and explore the films and artists that helped build Japanese animation.
The 31st Busan International Film Festival will take place from October 6 to October 15, 2026. For anime fans, one of the programme’s biggest attractions will be seeing Rintaro, an 85-year-old giant of Japanese animation, return to Korea after 17 years alongside four filmmakers representing what comes next. Busan is not simply looking back at animation history; it is putting that history in the room with its future.
