(Yeah, well, you try writing five movie reviews in five days and see how clever you feel.)īut to me ultimately The Cat Returns feels like it’s missing that signature Studio Ghibli flair and attention to detail. These heroic female leads are one of the things that keep me going back to Ghibli films every time, and one of the many reasons why they make such positive films for families to enjoy together. And like Whisper, our heroine is an awkward girl in her early teens with doubts about who she is, who ultimately learns to trust herself and be proud of her individuality. As usual, Ghibli provides us with a strong female heroine who will accept help when she needs it but is by no means helpless.
Plus the familiar story of a damsel stolen away by an evil king to be forced into an arranged marriage with an unknown prince is given a unique and amusing twist. I love the realistic behavior of the cats in the real world versus their fantastical – but still unmistakably feline – personalities in the Cat Kingdom. There are Secret Service cats in little tuxedos, giggling handmaiden cats, even military camo cats with green fur. My favorite part of this movie is the way the cats are depicted, and the wide variety of cats with markings specialized to their duties. Like Miyazaki, I’m a pretty big fan of kitties, and the cats in this film do not disappoint. Or Miyazaki just had a fondness for kitties and wanted to use them again point is, you’re not meant to think too hard about the connection, as it’s ultimately not important to either story. If you’ll remember back to the plot of Whisper, the main character wrote a novel starring the Baron, so the most logical connection to make is that The Cat Returns is – or takes place in the same world as – the story Shizuku writes in Whisper. While The Cat Returns brings back two characters from Whisper of the Heart and calls them by the same names, it’s not exactly a sequel, as the story seems to take place in a different sphere and the characters have different personalities (presumably – neither was gifted with the power of speech in Whisper so it’s hard to say what personalities, if any, they had). If I were president I’d staff my entire Secret Service with these kitties. Hiroyuki Morita, who had done previous animation work for the studio on Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989) and My Neighbors the Yamadas (1999), was handed the task of directing based on the 525 pages of storyboards he created based on Hiiragi’s manga. However, when the theme park pulled out of the deal, Miyazaki instead decided to keep the existing material and expand the film as a training exercise for future Ghibli directors. He hired Aoi Hiiragi, who had written the manga on which Whisper was based, to pen the manga equivalent of the new film.
Banking on the popularity of the two felines from 1995’s Whisper of the Heart – Muta/Moon, the fat train-riding cat, and Baron Humbert von Gikkingen, the well-dressed figurine in the antique shop which provided inspiration for the main character’s novel – Hayao Miyazaki wanted to bring both characters back in anthropomorphic form for the short. The fifth and final installment in my week-long tribute to Studio Ghibli started off as a twenty-minute short about cats commissioned by a Japanese theme park. Can Haru find her way out of the Kingdom before she’s completely and permanently transformed? But before her new friends can stop them, representatives of the Cat Kingdom come and steal Haru away in the night. But things really turn serious when the Cat King decides to bestow upon Haru what he views to be the ultimate gift: the hand of his son, the prince, in marriage! Desperate to avoid being taken to the Cat Kingdom and turned into a cat forever, Haru seeks the help of the Baron, a dapper kitty in a formal suit, along with his fat and grumpy friend Muta and a crow named Toto. When Haru performs a good deed by saving a cat from getting hit by a truck, the animal responds by thankingher and promising to repay her kindness! Soon Haru is getting all kinds of gifts from the Kingdom of Cats, including cattails in her garden (which make her sneeze) and live mice in her locker (which make her squeamish)! Haru regrets helping the cat, because now his brethren won’t leave her alone. She can never wake up in time for school and is always tripping over things. Synopsis: Shy and awkward Haru Yoshioka feels like she never does anything right.