"Coo of the Far Seas" may be somewhat unknown and low profile, but is nonetheless a nice, fun movie that packs action and a environmentalist message.
The movie starts as Obata finds a strange creature, which he names Coo. At first, the movie starts at a moderate pace, as the relation between Obata and Coo develops. Soon, however, other parties interested in the creature will begin to cause trouble and what started really nice and peaceful becomes a battle for the creature's safety and some other major issues. It's a really fun movie, and the action seems like an analogy to today's conflict: humans fighting for nature against others who show no respect towards nature and won't care to cause damage to fulfill their goals. The movie's antagonist are such people- they are really, really hateful as they represent the humans' worst traits.
While the movie isn't really something new and it has some typical clichés here and there, it's a really good film. It's story and some elements are somewhat childish (for example, as the relation between Coo and Obata develops, I couldn't avoid noticing similarities with some other Japanese animations, such as Pokemon, where such human-creature relations are present) but that's not a bad thing- just some people may not dig it as children do. But still, this movie was far above my expectations (there really weren't much, as there's no much info about it).
