ChaO (Japanese: チャオ, Hepburn: Chao) is a 2025 Japanese animated romantic comedy fantasy film. Produced by Studio 4°C and distributed by Toei Company, the film is directed by Yasuhiro Aoki with music composed by Takatsugu Muramatsu. The film was theatrically released in Japan on August 15, 2025.
Contents
Premise
A mermaid princess becomes engaged to a human engineer.
Production
The film is produced by Studio 4°C and directed by Yasuhiro Aoki, with Shōgo Furuya as unit director. Hirokazu Kojima designed the characters and served as chief animation director, and Takatsugu Muramatsu composed the music. Ōji Suzuka and Anna Yamada were cast in the lead roles. The film's theme song is "ChaO!" performed by Koda Kumi.
Release
The film was distributed by Toei Company, who released the film in theaters on August 15, 2025. GKIDS licensed the film for distribution in North America, where it released theatrically on April 10, 2026.
Reception
On the review aggregator website Rotten Tomatoes, 86% of 28 critics' reviews are positive, with an average rating of 6.5/10. Metacritic, which uses a weighted average, assigned the film a score of 67 out of 100, based on five critics, indicating "generally favorable" reviews.
Simon Abrams of RogerEbert.com gave the film three and a half out of four stars and wrote that it "is a real pleasure to watch and listen to".