A university student who dreams of the sea and a housebound young painter who has barely left her grandmother's shop meet by accident in Josee, the Tiger and the Fish, Kotaro Tamura's 2020 animated romance from Japan.
What is Josee, the Tiger and the Fish about?
Tsuneo is saving every yen he can toward a goal he talks about more than he admits: scuba diving in warm waters far from home. He works part-time, studies marine biology and keeps his plans practical. A chance encounter on a hillside road throws him together with Josee, a sharp-tongued young woman in a wheelchair who paints, reads voraciously and has built an entire interior world from books because the real one has rarely let her in. Her grandmother hires Tsuneo as a caretaker, and the first weeks are a standoff: she orders him around like a servant, he pushes back, and neither wants to admit the arrangement is starting to matter. Slowly the city opens for Josee as Tsuneo takes her to the aquarium, the shore and the streets she has only imagined. Then circumstances shift against both of them, and the question becomes whether each can want something for the other without losing what they want for themselves.
About the cast
The Japanese voice cast is led by Taishi Nakagawa and Kaya Kiyohara, with Yume Miyamoto, Kazuyuki Okitsu, Lynn, Chiemi Matsutera, Kanji Obana and Shintarou Moriyama rounding out the ensemble. Tamura directs, and the film's visual style leans on saturated colour and detailed renderings of water, fish and city light to match a story about a character who sees the world through paintings and picture books.
Context & significance
Josee, the Tiger and the Fish adapts a well-known Japanese short story that had already been filmed in live action before this animated version arrived. The anime treatment moves the material toward a younger audience and a brighter palette, but keeps the central tension between dependence and independence that made the original resonate. The film runs about 99 minutes and sits in the Drama and Romance genres rather than fantasy; there are no supernatural elements, and the tiger and fish of the title are images Josee carries from her reading rather than literal creatures. The film found a warm reception with audiences and is one of the more strongly reviewed animated romances in the catalogue, often mentioned alongside other Japanese features about young adults at a crossroads.
Watching Josee, the Tiger and the Fish on Ktime
Josee, the Tiger and the Fish is available on K-Time with both a Persian dub and Persian subtitles, so viewers can keep the original Japanese voice performances with Farsi captions or switch to the dubbed track. Watching requires a free K-Time account login; the title appears under Romance and Drama in the Farsi-language interface.