CHERRY AND VIRGIN takes its otaku romance to Tokyo
Toei Video's unusual anime feature, directed by Masanao Kawajiri, joins the Animation Section of the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival.
A Japanese anime feature with no release date and a very particular sense of humour has landed a slot at one of Asia's biggest film festivals. CHERRY AND VIRGIN is one of the titles in the Animation Section of the 39th Tokyo International Film Festival, announced on 18 September.
What the festival has confirmed
TIFF lists the film with Kawajiri Masanao as director and Okado Takashi and Kiyose Yaeko in the cast, under a copyright line reading ©2027 TOEI VIDEO. The festival's own synopsis calls it an awkward love story about an erotic-manga artist and a BL-lover, both new to romance, who slowly build a relationship, and adds that its striking visuals transcend anime. It sits in the Animation Section's alphabetical list alongside films from Brazil, France and the United States, among them DreamWorks Animation's Forgotten Island. The 39th edition runs from 26 October to 4 November 2026 around the Hibiya, Yurakucho, Marunouchi and Ginza districts of Tokyo.
The marketing is unusually up front about what this is
Toei Video's own channel has published two pieces of footage: a production report and a longer latest-footage reel. The title card on the production report introduces the film as a nervous romance animation directed by Masanao Kawajiri, and the Japanese caption beneath it describes a feature-length anime about an otaku man and a woman, drawn with an unusual visual technique. That is a refreshingly blunt pitch for a festival film whose write-up leans on how strange it looks. No Japanese release date appears in the festival announcement.
Why a festival slot matters here
Anime features normally arrive with a distributor, a date and a trailer cut for cinemas. This one has come the other way round: it is being introduced through a festival programme first, with the copyright line pointing at 2027 and the pitch resting on the drawing itself.
Our opinion
The most telling line in TIFF's announcement is the one about visuals transcending anime, because it is a polite way of saying this looks like nothing else in the section. Read it next to the others: DreamWorks animation, CloverWorks, Madhouse, a Cannes-acclaimed debut. Tokyo has built a programme where a film by a director most viewers will never have heard of sits beside studios with global release plans, and that is precisely where a title like this belongs. The 2027 copyright line is also a reminder that nobody has picked it up yet, which is the honest position for a debut feature being judged on its drawing rather than its brand. If the artwork really is the pitch, a festival audience is the right first test of it.