Foxing: Kitsuné-Tsuki

Bluesky

Something new from Toei Studios, this inventive animated short, which screened as part of the 2026 Fantasia International Film Festival, emerged as part of a project encouraging animators to explore new styles. Takero Shinozuka chose to embody that theme within the film itself. It follows animator Shinano (Miho Wataya) as she struggles to focus on the tasks assigned to her whilst being harassed by the characters in her own imagination, who are hungry for attention.

Shorter and rounder than the other people in the studio where she works, Shinano doesn’t fit in; and given her quiet, subdued personality, she moves through life as the sort of woman other people don’t notice. What might get her noticed is success in the design competition that’s coming up, but to achieve that she’ll need to improve not just her concentration but her confidence. One character in particular, a fox spirit (or kitsuné, though this one has only a single tail), embodies the self-hating part of her consciousness, making persistent negative remarks. Trying to capture it on her laptop, she produces one unsatisfying sketch after another. Meanwhile she is increasingly exhibiting symptoms of kitsuné possession, chewing on her pen, sliding into a world that may be more closely related to that of her imagination, or of folklore, than our own.

There are some stunning framing choices along the way, from an early scene in which the camera circles around Shinano as she sits at her desk, to a later one in which light and shadow slide across her as she makes her way home, again hinting at spiritual or even physical ambiguity. The film grows darker both literally and metaphorically over time. A scene in which crow-like creatures watch her as she walks along the street has a deeply discomfiting effect to rival Hitchcock’s famous centrepiece in The Birds, and later, when her house fills up with mocking yokai, you may find yourself experiencing the kind of chills that shorts, having less room to work in, rarely manage to instil.

A potent little film which viewers who have experienced anxiety or depression will feel particularly acutely, Foxing: Kitsuné-Tsuki represents the kind of breakthrough which never comes easily, and frequently has to be wrenched out of just such struggle. If Toei’s other discoveries are of a similar quality, its future is looking bright.

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