General · EdgepediaOctober 3, 20264 min read

Puss in Boots (Кот в сапогах) (1969 film)

Puss in Boots (Japanese: 長靴をはいた猫, Nagagutsu o haita neko; Russian release title Кот в сапогах) is a 1969 Japanese animated feature film produced by Toei Animation (then Toei Doga), loosely based on Charles Perrault's fairy tale, directed by Kimio Yabuki and released on March 18, 1969 with a running time of 80 minutes.¹^•² Its hero, the cat Pero, became the official mascot of Toei Animation, and the film is regarded by the studio as one of the masterpieces of the Toei Doga era.³

Key fact	Detail
Original title	長靴をはいた猫 (Nagagutsu o haita neko); English title Puss'n Boots¹^•⁴
Release	March 18, 1969, Toei chain; 80 minutes, color, Toei Scope¹^•⁵
Director and writers	Directed by Kimio Yabuki; screenplay by Hisashi Inoue and Morihisa Yamamoto from Perrault's tale²^•⁶
Music	Seiichiro Uno; lyrics by Inoue and Yamamoto⁷
Mascot legacy	Pero has served as Toei Animation's corporate symbol since the film's release³
Sequels	The Three Musketeers in Boots (1972) and Puss in Boots: Travels Around the World (1976)²
Ratings	Kinopoisk 7.8 (about 3,800 votes); IMDb 7.2²

Spoilers

Story

The film keeps only the skeleton of Perrault's tale and builds an adventure plot on it. Pero, a cat sentenced to death by the boss cat for sparing a mouse, cuts his hanging rope and flees, pursued by a trio of feline hitmen.¹ Taking shelter from the rain, he meets Pierre, a miller's son driven out by his greedy brothers after their father's death.¹ Seeing a royal notice searching for a husband for Princess Rosa, Pero schemes to pass Pierre off as a suitable suitor, using the clothes and gifts of Pierre's brothers, who are rival candidates.⁸ Pierre confesses to Rosa that he is a peasant's son, and she does not reject him.⁸

The antagonist is Lucifer, a sorcerer described in Russian synopses as the ruler of Hell, who also wants to marry the princess and abducts her when she refuses.²^•⁸ The climax is an extended chase and battle through Lucifer's castle, with fights across towers, stairways, and a drawbridge; the demon melts away in the morning sun, and Rosa and Pierre, falling through the light, are rescued by a flock of doves.⁶

Production

The film was made by Toei Doga with a staff that later became notable in the industry. The screenplay was written by Hisashi Inoue and Morihisa Yamamoto, who had worked together on The Andersen Stories, and gag supervision was entrusted to Nakahara Yumihiko, the pen name of the writer Nobuhiko Kobayashi.⁶ Yasuo Mori served as animation director; according to a Japanese animation history database, he sketched some sixty live cats from every angle to study their movement.⁷ The key-animation credits include Yasuo Otsuka, Reiko Okuyama, Yoichi Kotabe, Yoichi Oda, Akemi Ota, and Hayao Miyazaki, then early in his career at the studio.⁷

Reception and legacy

The film opened as the first feature of the Toei Manga Matsuri festival program and, according to Toei Animation, was an unprecedented hit in both attendance and box-office revenue.³ It received the "Most Entertaining Film" prize in the children's film section of the Moscow International Film Festival.⁷ Toei's own retrospective calls it one of the studio's greatest works of the period, praising its humor, gags, and the full use of the animation techniques of its day.¹^•³

Pero's afterlife has been unusually long. More than fifty years after release, the cat remains Toei Animation's corporate symbol, recognized by fans and employees alike.³ The film spawned two sequels, The Three Musketeers in Boots (1972) and Puss in Boots: Travels Around the World (1976), and the three pictures together are known as the Nagagutsu Neko series.² A 4K remaster of the 1969 film, listed at 81 minutes, has been broadcast on Toei Channel.⁹

In Russia, where the film has circulated for decades under the title Кот в сапогах, it holds a Kinopoisk rating of 7.8 from roughly 3,800 votes, against 7.2 on IMDb.² The Russian dub cast the comedian Georgy Vitsin as the Cat, a performance that, as one Kinopoisk reviewer notes, echoed his comic roles in Leonid Gaidai's films and added a layer of meaning for Soviet audiences.¹⁰ Russian-language reviews frequently contrast the film with the 1968 Soviet Puss in Boots by Valentina and Zinaida Brumberg, which follows Perrault's plot closely, while the Japanese film uses the tale only as a base for an original adventure with a subplot about Pero's relations with his fellow cats.¹⁰ Reviewers also note that the character designs give the heroes natural European features rather than a contemporary anime look.¹⁰

References

Initially written Oct 3, 2026 · Reviewed: Oct 3, 2026; Oct 25, 2026 · Edited: Oct 15, 2026; Oct 25, 2026; Nov 1, 2026