Two more anthropomorphic animated features

The Cartoon Brew website has just announced two new animated features with anthropomorphic animals coming later this year.

Last year’s Japanese cartoon animation The Boy and the Beast (Bakemono no Ko), directed by Mamoru Hosoda, will be released on March 4 “in selected theatres” by Funimation, in both subtitled and dubbed versions. It’s about a Japanese homeless boy, Kyuta, who goes into “the beast world” and becomes the apprentice of Kumatetsu (“Iron Bear”), a martial arts warrior. Tickets will go on sale on the Funimation site on February 5. The Cartoon Brew announcement includes the new American theatrical poster.

Izzie’s Way Home, a CGI animation feature currently in production by The Asylum in Burbank, California, will be a direct-to-DVD release in May 2016, a month before Pixar’s Finding Dory on June 17. Izzie’s Way Home is a shameless rip-off of Finding Nemo and Finding Dory, about a cute purple girl aquarium fish who escapes from a yacht into the ocean and learns how to live in the wild; but it will have its own CGI look. The “technical director” is Ron Thornton.

Cartoon Brew also has exciting news for animation fans about a new French animated feature, Long Way North, coming to the U.S. theatrically later this year, but it doesn’t contain any anthropomorphic characters.