India’s Toonz Media Group and Tokyo-based studio Supersub LLC have joined forces to co-produce “The Taste of Water,” an animated function documentary tracing the historical past, tradition, and way forward for Japanese sake.
The deal was unveiled on the Annecy Animation Movie Competition.
Directed by Riki Ohkanda and govt produced by Ryo Nakajima, the movie is presently in manufacturing. It follows a road-movie construction divided into 5 chapters – overlaying sake’s fundamentals, its historical past, its relationship with Japanese tradition, the pressures the business now faces, and its potential futures. Via encounters with brewers, historians, artists, distributors, and cultural consultants throughout Japan, the documentary builds its inquiry round a single query: what does it imply for an awesome sake to style like water?
The movie’s manufacturing pipeline is central to its id. Reside-action footage gathered all through Japan will probably be transformed into anime-influenced visuals utilizing AI-assisted rotoscoping and 3D Gaussian Splatting, a volumetric rendering method, each developed in-house by Supersub. The hybrid workflow is designed to convey sensory and emotional dimensions of sake tradition that typical documentary codecs can not simply attain.
“The story of sake is a story that engages all five senses,” Nakajima stated. “Through this unique combination of live action, animation, and AI-assisted visual transformation, we can bring audiences closer to experiences that cannot be expressed through traditional filmmaking alone.”
The collaboration marks the newest chapter in Supersub’s relationship with Annecy. The studio first appeared on the pageant when its earlier function, “Who Said Death Is Beautiful?,” obtained an official choice in 2024. “The Taste of Water” was subsequently offered at MIFA 2025 as a part of the Tokyo Metropolitan Authorities’s exhibition programme on the occasion.
Toonz, which produces greater than 5,000 minutes of animation yearly and has co-produced options together with “Bartali’s Bicycle” and “Zombie Town,” brings worldwide gross sales and distribution infrastructure to the undertaking. The partnership positions “The Taste of Water” on the intersection of Japan’s animation pedigree and India’s rising function in international content material manufacturing.
“Artificial intelligence is one of the most discussed technologies in the creative industry today, yet there are few examples of its thoughtful application in storytelling,” stated Viswanath Rao of Toonz Media Group. “With ‘The Taste of Water,’ we are demonstrating how AI can work alongside artists and filmmakers to create new forms of expression.”
“Animated feature documentary is one of the most exciting and underserved spaces in the international market right now,” added Gulshan David, VP of function movies at Toonz. “We’re here at Annecy to find the right partners to take it there together.”
The movie is concentrating on pageant circuits in 2027.
