The Pompo Team Cooks Up Something New
Takayuki Hirao isn't adapting anyone else's story this time. The director behind Pompo the Cinéphile — and a ufotable veteran who helmed The Garden of Sinners Chapter 5 and God Eater — has built an original project from scratch, and he chose to reveal it on one of the biggest stages in film.
At the 79th Cannes Film Festival's Annecy Animation Showcase, held May 15–17, Hirao and producer Ryōichirō Matsuo (松尾亮一郎) took the stage to unveil WASTED CHEF: an anime that pairs cooking with science fiction. According to Comic Natalie's report, both spoke about tackling the theme of "value" in the modern world, and explained that the combination of food and sci-fi was their way of exploring it.
One detail stood out. The Latin word restaurare — meaning "to heal" or "to restore" — was described as a key concept for the project. It's an evocative choice: the word shares its root with "restaurant," and the connection between food, restoration, and narrative recovery feels deliberately layered.
What the Teaser Visual Reveals
The newly released teaser visual strikes a warm tone. Two characters are shown happily assembling hamburgers together, rendered in a style that feels inviting and grounded. But the accompanying tagline cuts against that warmth:
"That day, 'you' and 'flavor' disappeared from the world."
It's a sharp contrast — a cozy cooking scene shadowed by a premise where taste itself has vanished. The implication is clear: something catastrophic separates these two characters, and food is somehow tied to whatever that rupture is. The Comic Natalie article notes that the visual suggests a major turning point awaits this pair.
A Reunion of Pompo Talent
The staff roster reads like a Pompo the Cinéphile reunion card. Shingo Adachi (Sword Art Online, Lycoris Recoil) returns on character design, bringing the same clean, expressive style that defined both his SAO work and his directorial debut. Kenta Matsukuma, who scored Pompo the Cinéphile and is widely known as the music producer behind idol group BiSH, handles the music again.
Animation production stays at CLAP, the studio Matsuo founded in 2016 that also produced The Tunnel to Summer, the Exit of Goodbyes. It's a tight-knit team that clearly works well together — and for an original project with no built-in audience, that creative trust matters.
Looking Ahead
WASTED CHEF is still early. No release date has been announced, though the project is listed on the Marché du Film marketplace with a 2027 target completion. There's no public trailer yet either, but a special preview is set to screen during revival showings of Pompo the Cinéphile in Japanese theaters starting May 29, 2026.
No international streaming partner has been confirmed, and there's no official website live yet — which tracks for a project that just formally introduced itself to the world at Cannes. For now, the teaser visual and the Cannes presentation are all we have. But a cooking sci-fi anime from a director with ufotable pedigree, debuting at one of the world's most prestigious film festivals, is the kind of pitch that earns a spot on the watchlist early.