The first look at Minoru Kawasaki's live-action "Neko Rahmen"

by Chris MaGee

Here's one for fans of Minoru Kawasaki, of which I am one. Back at the beginning of May we ran the story that Kawasaki, who brought us "The Calamari Wrestler", "Executive Koala" and most recently "Monster X Strikes Back: Attack the G8 Summit" was going to be helming a live-action version of Kenji Sonishi's four panel comic strip "Neko Rahmen" about a cat who runs his own ramen restaurant. The original manga published in Monthly Comic Blade has already been turned into a successful flash cartoon. Check out an English subtitled epsiode below.

Now the first image from Kawasaki's live-action adaptation has been released. It shows our hero Neko Rahmen with his regular customer, salaryman Tanaka-san, played by Kazuki Kato who also starred in "Monster X". It's nice to see that Kawasaki is staying true to his low-budget roots and has Neko Rahmen's onscreen look being a puppet and not some CGI cat like in those terrible "Garfield" films; but if the cat looks like a stuffed toy his voice won't be low-budget at all. Veteran voice actor Tōru Furuya will be providing the voice of the culinary gifted cat. Anime fans may recognize Furuya from his vocal performances as Tuxedo Mask in "Sailor Moon" and Amuro Ray in "Mobile Suit Gundam".

Again, I'm a fan of Kawasaki's campy films, so I think this could be a real laugh. Just think of "Tampopo"... with hairballs.

Thanks to Variety Japan for the image.