This is an original Japanese poster, printed in 1998, for the re-release of “The Wonderful World of Puss ‘n Boots” (長靴をはいた猫).

Sentenced to death for rescuing mice, swashbuckling cat Pero is evading a trio of bumbling feline assassins when he meets a timid boy named Pierre. Kicked out of home and cheated of his inheritance by his greedy brothers, Pierre joins Pero as a nomad. Arriving in a kingdom, they learn the Princess Rose is to be given to the wealthiest man in the land. Seeing that Pierre is taken with the girl at first sight, Pero presents him as a duke to the royal family. Rose falls for Pierre’s gentle ways, but it turns out the dark prince and wizard Lucifier seeks to make the princess his bride and snatches her away to his castle. Can Pero and Pierre overcome this great adversary?

The film was released in Japan on March 18, 1969. The film is particularly notable for giving Toei Animation its mascot and logo, and for its roll call of top key animators of the time: Yasuo Ōtsuka, Reiko Okuyama, Sadao Kikuchi, Yōichi Kotabe, Akemi Ōta, Hayao Miyazaki, and Akira Daikubara, supervised by animation director Yasuji Mori.

They got relatively free rein and adequate support to create virtuosic and distinctive sequences, making it a key example of the Japanese model of division of labour in animation by which animators are assigned by scene rather than character. Most famous of these sequences is a chase across castle parapets animated in alternating cuts by Ōtsuka and Miyazaki, which would serve as the model for similar sequences in such later films as Miyazaki’s feature directorial debut Lupin III: The Castle of Cagliostro and The Cat Returns (2002). Miyazaki is also the manga artist of a promotional manga adaptation of the film originally serialised in the Sunday Chūnichi Shimbun during 1969 and republished in 1984 in a book about the making of the film.

The film was re-released 9 years later in the 1978 Summer Toei Manga Matsuri on July 22, and, also, in 1998.