Panda! Go Panda! (1972) on Netflix

TV-Y7-FV197234mAnimation Comedy

Grandmother leaves for Nagasaki, so Mimiko is on her own. A panda cub, Panny, is asleep on her doorstep; his father, PapaPanda, soon arrives, and the three become a family.

Netflix3.4/5
IMDb6.8/102,205 votes
Rotten TomatoesNot available

Trailer

Watch the trailer on YouTube

Plot summary

Mimiko is a bright little girl who lives by herself in a house in a bamboo grove. Her grandmother has gone to Nagasaki for her grandfather's memorial service, and Mimiko has promised to write to her every day. On her way home from the shops she finds a panda cub, Panny, asleep on the back doorstep, and invites him in for a drink. Panny's father, PapaPanda, arrives soon after. Since Mimiko has no parents, PapaPanda offers to be her father, and she becomes a mother to Panny, so the three start a household together. The next morning Mimiko goes to school and Panny tags along, though she had told him to stay home. A day later, a policeman checking on the house sees PapaPanda and alerts the zoo, whose keeper lost the pair when they escaped.

Cast

Did you know?!Facts and trivia about Panda! Go Panda! (1972)

Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.

Isao Takahata, Hayao Miyazaki and Yoichi Kotabe left Toei Animation in 1971 to join mentor Yasuo Otsuka at A Productions and make an animated series of Astrid Lindgren's Pippi Longstocking, but Lindgren flatly refused them when they travelled to Sweden. After Lupin III Part I was cancelled in 1972, the team reworked the rejected Pippi ideas into Panda Kopanda.
Panda Kopanda arrived at the height of Japan's panda craze, which began in September 1972 when the government announced the loan of a pair of giant pandas from China to Ueno Zoo as part of panda diplomacy.
The team behind the short went on to bigger things: in 1974 Takahata, Miyazaki and Kotabe created the landmark anime series Heidi, Girl of the Alps, and in 1985 Takahata and Miyazaki founded Studio Ghibli.