TAMALA2030 brings the punk cat back for a 22 January rollout

The punk cat has a date again, and this time it is going out everywhere at once. The film's own site confirmed on 17 September that TAMALA2030 -a punk cat in dark- opens simultaneously in Japan and the United States on 22 January 2027, with a new main visual and a main trailer now running on the film's YouTube channel. Advance tickets, sold in Japan as Mubichike, go on sale online from 18 September.

It is a genuine revival rather than a reboot. The 2002 feature TAMALA2010 a punk cat in space, written, directed and scored by t.o.L, built its following on the festival circuit, and the new film reunites the people who made it. t.o.L returns on direction, screenplay and music, with Kentaro Nemoto as animation director and production split between t.o.L, Lamb Inc. and GunsRock Inc. The voice cast includes Nakata Atsuko, Kasuya Daisuke, Aoi Utana, Kiyohana and Taniguchi Kei.

Seven cats, one midnight and a 77-year pattern

TAMALA2030 is set in a Cat Japan of 2030, a century after a pandemic covered Cat Earth, where accelerating climate change and a chain of wars have wrecked ordinary life. Despairing young cats spread a message that reads simply: Real End. Into that, seven child cats disappear at exactly midnight on 7 July, all of them, across the country, at the same moment.

TAMALA, a dancing and permanently independent punk cat who lives in Meguro City, takes the case with her boyfriend Michelangelo, a self-declared private detective. Their search leads to a mountain town where child cats have vanished at midnight on 7 July every 77 years, a pattern known there as Nomos, and to an approaching catastrophe the film calls Real End.

A year on the festival circuit

The film has been travelling since 2025. It had its world premiere at the Fantasia International Film Festival, then played Sitges in Spain, L'etrange and TOHorror in France, Les Utopiales, the Kaboom Animation Festival in the Netherlands, and Japan's Yubari International Fantastic Film Festival, where the Japan premiere was held on 6 June 2026.

Our opinion

Japanese animation's release calendar is mostly franchise sequels arriving with a merchandising plan attached. TAMALA2030 is the opposite: a 24-year gap, a director who has kept the same abrasive voice since 2002, and a festival run that began in genre rooms rather than a prime-time slot. That gap is the whole appeal, and the film leans into it. The announcement page sells love, eros and a resolutely rude view of everyday life in the same breath, which is not the language committees tend to approve.

The commercial detail worth watching is the day-and-date Japanese and US opening. Anime features routinely stagger territories by months or years, so a simultaneous date for a small, spiky cult sequel says the international rights are already placed. Whether that stretches to UK or European screenings is a question the film has not answered, and outside Japan and the United States that silence is the thing to track.