“Monkey Quest,” Toei Animation’s ambitious new production sneak peeked Monday at Annecy, was born from a simple question, says producer Yoshi Ikezawa. 

”[Producer] Joseph Chou and I asked: How can Japanese anime reach the same level of mainstream awareness and emotional connection that major U.S. animated films have achieved with global audiences?” 

For Ikezawa and Chou, the true strength of anime lies in its distinctive characters. “Anime has an incredible ability to create characters that audiences carry with them for many years,” Ikezawa told Variety before the Work-in-Progress unveil of “Monkey Quest” at Annecy.  

For this, they approached Naoto Oshima, the original character designer of the iconic video game character “Sonic the Hedgehog. “He began developing a concept inspired by the legend of ‘Journey to the West’ and he brought us the original story idea and characters” that Oshima hoped “could carry the spirit and energy of anime, while also becoming a global family adventure,” Ikezawa recalls.  

The film, currently in post-production, follows the 12-year-old girl Elle and her 1-year-old brother Adam as they meet Okon (voiced by Adam Devine), a monkey with tremendous power as a legendary guardian of Earth. They face off against the villainous Vex (voiced by J.K. Simmons) in a quest which takes them across wildly different landscapes and even peers into a dimension beyond our own.  

“The original idea [from Joseph Chou] was essentially ‘Journey to the West’ in space,” says director and screenwriter David N. Weiss, “and that became the foundation for everything we did.” Weiss continues, “I read multiple translations of the novel and was struck not just by the adventure but by the humor, satire, and emotional depth that have made the story beloved for centuries.”

Co-director Stephanie Ma Stine (“Kung Fu Panda 4” ) calls the figure of Sun Wukong and his stories “evergreen” – but she’s not surprised by this longevity. “In every culture and time period, there has been a keen fondness for the trickster character,” she explains. Weiss adds that plenty of creative license was taken but the team enacted these changes while trying to stay true to what he calls the spirit of transformation and redemption at the heart of the original myth.  

Development and pre-production began in the U.S. The original plan was to bring the production to Japan and bring aboard Japanese animators at that point, Ikezawa says. 

The U.S. and Japan Move Closer Together on Animation

The increasing global interest in anime shifted these plans somewhat, however. “As the project developed, we realized that many of the best animators and artists from around the world had grown up loving Japanese anime,” Ikezawa adds. “They did not see anime as something foreign to them, they saw it as part of their own creative language.”

From this point the project became more global, expanding beyond even the U.S. and Japan as the team widened to animators from other countries. “The Japanese side brought the history, craft and discipline of anime production. The U.S. side brought a strong sense of story structure, character emotion and global family entertainment. And the international artists brought their own passion and point of view. That is what made the project feel alive to us.”  

Regarding this international collaboration, the directors of the film all expressed excitement about working with Toei Animation, with regard to the long history that Ikezawa mentioned. 

“I grew up watching Toei cartoons – my favorite was ‘Sailor Moon,'” Stine says. “To be part of this history, even as a small drop in the ocean, means more than I can convey in a short amount of time.”  

Weiss highlighted how much trust they felt from Toei during production, saying that “notes always came with a gentle hand.” He adds, “In many ways, it reminded me of the special culture Sherry Lansing fostered during my years at Paramount: a feeling that the studio genuinely wanted you to succeed.” Stine concurs with Weiss on the sense of support from producers Yoshi Ikezawa and Tim Kwok. “They also fed us really well, which is always much appreciated,” she quips.  

Perhaps the most striking design idea in “Monkey Quest” was the decision to blend 2D and 3D animation, often using layers of hand-drawn 2D animation over the top of 3D CG animation. The studio Sanzigen was responsible for this part of production, reserved for when the film touched upon the ‘ethereal’ dimension from which Okon originates.

Character designer and co-director Takao Noguchi spoke to the philosophy behind the character looks at the core of both methodologies. “The focus was on clear, recognizable silhouettes,” he says. “On this project, we also incorporated kanji-inspired forms and symbolic design elements connected to each character’s role, which helped make the cast feel more unique and expressive.”

During the work-in-progress session, when giving advice to a curious student, Stine reflected on the newfound closeness of animation in Hollywood and animation in Japan: when talking about the different practices in storyboarding (the compartmentalized approach of classic Hollywood animation versus the more holistic version in anime), she noted that more are drifting towards the anime approach, where the storyboard artists hold more information.

“Monkey Quest” appears to be a celebration and exploration of this newfound closeness in these different methods, a hybridized team making hybridized art.