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Pompo: The Cinéphile (Eiga Daisuki Pompo-san) is a 2017 on-going online manga by Shogo Sugitani hosted on Pixiv that has been turned into a 2021 anime movie by Studio CLAP.
The film's story follows J.D. "Pompo" Pomponette, a prolific producer of trashy B-movies and sexy flicks operating out of "Nyallywood", the world's film capital. She has written a script for an artistic movie, but has no intention of filming it herself given her track record. She would rather give this opportunity to Gene Fini, her longtime assistant, who is a total film buff but with no actual experience in filmmaking, after seeing how good he is at editing the trailers for her movies.
Meanwhile, Nathalie Woodward, an aspiring actress with no previous experience, gives her first audition at the same time, and is going to have her debut in Pompo's movie...
List of tropes in the anime film:
- Ambiguous Situation: This being a film about filmmaking, Pompo's Peterzen Films logo at the end alludes that the whole movie is a film adaptation of what really happened, as a possible explanation of the more outlandish events and coincidences that occur in the film.
- Animal Motifs: Nyallywood is named after the "nyaa" sound that the Japanese use to represent a cat's meow. The Nyallywood symbol is a cat, as seen around the locale.
- Bland-Name Product: All of the brands in Nyallywood start with the syllable "Nyaa" (as explained above), so there are the apparel line Nyanta Cruz, the soft drink Nyapsi, etc. There's an equivalent of Apple products with a cat in place of the apple; the name is never stated but it's most likely "Nyapple".
- Canon Foreigner: Alan Gardner was created specifically for the movie.
- Contrived Coincidence: There are several, the most notable one is how Gene ends up meeting Alan Gardner, who went to the same film school as him and became a banker in the meantime, and who will become instrumental into securing the funds for the making of Gene's movie.
- Country Mouse: Nathalie is a simple, hard-working girl who lives in the country with her grandmother and travels to the big city to make her dream of being an actress come true.
- Creator's Culture Carryover: The movie does a good job of depicting the United States, however the characters are seen bowing to one another several times, and Gene's behavior at the end is a fairly standard depiction of Japanese Spirit.
- Credits Gag: The credits of the film end with the logo of Peterzen Films, Pompo's film company.
- Engineered Public Confession: A really weird example. Alan Gardner's crowdfunding idea to finance Meister, Gene's film, is to... broadcast the meeting he's having with the investors all over the world.
- Exhausted Eye Bags: Gene's default look.
- Gratuitous German: Meister, the title of Pompo's script and the film-within-a-film set in Europe, specifically Switzerland.
- It's Not Supposed to Win Oscars: In-Universe, this is Pompo's mentality when producing her B-movies. Since she wants to win a prize for the Oscar Bait script she has just written, she wisely decides to leave the actual directing to another person: Gene.
- Life Imitates Art: In-universe, most of Gene's struggles in directing the Meister film are paralleled with the struggles Martin Braddock's character faces in the film itself.
- Meta Casting: Gene and Nathalie are newcomers to the world of filmmaking and acting respectively, and their voice actors Hiroya Shimizu and Rinka Otani are novices with no other major credits on their resumes. On the opposite end of the spectrum, veteran influential voice actor Akio Ōtsuka lends his voice to Martin Braddock, "the world's greatest actor".
- Meta Fiction: A film about making a film that could also be the fictionalized account of how the film we just saw was being made (see Ambiguous Situation above).
- Misery Builds Character: Part of the reason why Pompo wants Gene to film her script. According to her, successful and happy people don't have the drive to do great stuff, while misfits, weirdos and loners like Gene suffer because their passions aren't validated by others and as such they feel the need to prove their worth to the world.
- Mundane Made Awesome: Gene editing the finished movie, represented as him cutting and slashing huge film strips with a sword with the typical anime flourish. Also an example of meta-humor of sorts, since one of the points of the film is that the most mundane parts of film-making (editing, securing the funds, dealing with the crew...) are also the most important, and yet the film goes and portrays hours and hours of editing as a flashy and quick activity, since it would be too boring otherwise.
- Mukokuseki: The film is set in the United States, so Braddock and most of the secondary characters are drawn as anime artists usually portray Caucasian people. On the other hand Gene, Nathalie and Mystia are depicted in a more standard anime style, not to speak of Pompo's cartoonish appearance.
- Mythology Gag: Near the end Pompo is in a cafe and a woman in a meido outfit can be seen briefly. She's the protagonist of the spin-off manga Fran: The Cinephile.
- Narrative Shapeshifting: While talking with Gene about how she dislikes films that are over-long and bloated, Pompo briefly inflates herself as if she were a balloon. Another example of how much more cartoony she is than everyone else.
- No Antagonist: There's no actual threat all around the production of the movie, and even the events that could slow down the making of the film (the lack of goats or the rainstorm) got to be useful to work around the film.
- Nonstandard Character Design: Pompo looks far more cartoonish than any of the other characters, what with her diminutive stature, gigantic pigtails, Blush Sticker and so on. It's heavily implied that she's far older than she looks, however no in-universe reason is ever given as to why she looks and acts like that. However, if the original manga is to be believed, then she is not actually older than she looks and is around the age of a junior high school student, as revealed in the third main volume.
- Only One Name: Popular actress Mystia is only ever referred as such by everyone including the film posters. It's most likely a stage name, since everyone else has a full name.
- Oscar Bait: What Meister, Pompo's script, is supposed to be in-universe. It ends up winning four Osc- sorry, "Nyacademy Awards".
- Overly Long Name: Pompo's full name is Joelle Davidovich Pomponette.
- Raised by Grandparents: Pompo is being raised by her grandfather, legendary producer J.D. Peterzen (who bears a vague resemblance to John Carpenter). No reason is ever given for this. (Albeit, Pompo mentioned to Gene that due to her parents always being away for business, most of her time she has to stay with her Grandfather.)
- Scenery Porn: All the locales, whether they are the fictional USA of Nyallywood, or the Swiss Alps where Pompo's movie is filmed, look gorgeous.
- Shout-Out:
- Pompo has a DVD of Cinema Paradiso in her office.
- Martin Braddock and Nathalie Woodward's names are most likely a homage to Marlon Brando and Natalie Wood.
- During the bankers' meeting at about 2/3rds of the movie, the lone female investor crosses and uncrosses her legs in a manner similar to what Sharon Stone did in Basic Instinct (though not with an erotic connotation). She too wears mostly white.
- During the wrap-up party Nathalie briefly does a dance from Fortnite. (Read the YMMV tab for the reason why.)
- Sliding Scale of Idealism Versus Cynicism: Firmly on the idealistic scale. It does not shy away in portraying the less glamorous parts of film-making like editing, problems with schedules, with the crew, lack of funding and so on, but in the end passion, hard work and love for movies win over everything and even a first-time director and a first-time actress can aspire to win the best prize there is.
- "World's Best" Character: Martin Braddock is all but stated to be the world's greatest actor, who retired from the scenes about a decade before the events in the story. He accepts to get out of retirement after having read Pompo's script.
