The Cat Returns (2002)

The Cat Returns is an excellent companion to Spirited Away, as they are both Alice-in-Wonderland-like excursions into bizarre worlds with their own rules and logic. Both have female leads who, unlike dear Alice, experience definite arcs of character and capability. The Cat Returns is a lighter film overall, delivering belly laughs.

Director Morita does an exemplary job of bringing a Japanese graphic novel to the screen.

As it is, it’s the best non-Miyazaki, non-Takahata Ghibli feature. A girl prevents a cat from getting crushed by a truck and gains favor with a nocturnal kingdom of hipster felines, in a story with echoes of Alice in Wonderland and the novels of Haruki Murakami.

Animated by Hiroyuki Morita -- a protege of Hayao Miyazaki -- story draws more from fairy tales than the eerie transformative productions by Studio Ghibli. Result is catchy entertainment for kids and adults.

The results are disappointingly conventional for a Ghibli film—the film is good-hearted, energetic, and full of Ghibli's characteristically beautiful hand-rendered animation, but it's also lightweight and hyper, with none of Miyazaki's more resonant themes.

Another enjoyable fantasy adventure from Studio Ghibli, the animation house that gave us the delightful Spirited Away. This is not in the same class, but lovers of Miyazaki’s masterpiece will recognise the same worldview – essentially that of Lewis Carroll’s Alice stories refracted through a modern Japanese sensibility.

There's little tension or opportunity for emotional involvement in the brief story, and despite competent animation the cats are rarely anthropomorphised to good comic effect. One for anime - and animal - lovers only.

My childhood anime. Me and My mom watched it when i was kid, what a nostalgia.

Looks like sequel of Whispers of the heart, but isn't, or may it be. This furry adventure implies comedy and romance in good amount, in a story that reminds Alice in Wonderland. So bad is too short when you get excited. For anime lovers in this days of obliged home arrest.

One of Ghibli’s lighter films, The Cat Returns is a cute, but strained, Whisper of the Heart spinoff. Originally pitched as a breezy short to promote a cat-themed amusement park, it was expanded to a seventy-odd minute feature film when their client canceled the project. In this longer form, it explores the personalities and livelihoods of two minor characters from the first film: Muta, the super-heavyweight stray feline with an expert knowledge of urban shortcuts, and Baron, a sharply-dressed anthropomorphic cat statue that sometimes springs to life. These two were the subjects of a creative writing segment in Whisper of the Heart, a very short flight of imaginary fancy, but here they’re lent more credence and a firmer standing in reality. A reality with opulent kitty kings and bejeweled processions of kitty attendants, yes, but a reality nonetheless. All the best bits are in the first act, where the absurdity of the cat kingdom exists alongside the traffic patterns and schoolyard vexations of a more familiar setting. There, the film freely giggles at all the silly prospect of this almost-imaginary side world. Grateful cats going overboard with unwanted (and sometimes disgusting) gifts. Wobbly cats struggling to walk upright, thrown off-balance by their ridiculously elongated torsos. Black-suited bodyguard cats, racing to keep the riffraff out of a spontaneous parade and away from their plump, fluffy liege. There’s great charm and cleverness to these little scenes; I loved the chance to grin, gape and let their ideas carry me away. That’s left behind when the plot really gets to business and our gaze shifts to a private kitty-only landscape. Here, I was less enamored with the king’s transparent manipulations and less amused by the quirks and idiosyncrasies of the skewed society. It’s not as much fun when we’re exclusively in their world! Without the contrast of a recognizable city life, the narrative relaxes into light fairy tale fodder and coasts to an easy finish. The animation is good, as always, and I loved the basic premise. By the end of that short running time, however, its roots as a genial, but conceptually limited, short story are made clear. There’s more than twenty minutes of material here, but not enough to fill an hour-plus.

Real Rating: 59.5 The Cat Returns is the straight to DVD cash-in of the Ghilbi universe. Its length fits the formula perfectly as does its "look you thought this secondary character was cute, right?" attitude. Designed as a merch mover, this work features no soul none of the spirit and drive that makes the other works stand out. ​ DE: We can put some of the faults of this film at the feet of Morita Hiroyuki, who as an animator is quite sound, especially if you look at their body of work. However, as a director, this is it, Morita never went on to direct any other feature films, and it is quite apparent why. The film does not feel like it has any vision, instead reads like Morita was thrown into the deep end on a project that was not their own. Nothing feels cohesive only a mishmash of tropes and boxes to be ticked to get punters in the seats, which it did do. ​ W: Where most of the blame lies is Yoshida Reiko and obviously, Ghilbi's intentions. Though you can give the studio some benefit of the doubt as they were not to know that Yoshida is a mass-producing writer. Not known for quality and tends to pen scripts of middle-level anime TV series and the movie of said series if it catches fire. These traits are apparent what with the short run time, which is common in TV and made for TV movies. The structure is hitting beat after beat even though the story is not calling for it. The tropes are out in full force, and every ounce of soul that resonated throughout Whisper of the Heart is stripped away for puerile jokes. This brings me back to my review of that movie and how I said source material does not matter, and this film reminds us of that as Hiiragi Aoi also wrote the source material for The Cat Returns, yet somehow all the depth and warmth are but a cold memory. C: When we get to the cinematography, we quite quickly realise that this film was meant to be a testing ground for Ghlibi's up and coming artists. Takahashi Kentaro would be our cinematographer, and this was their first foray into cinematography, and you guessed it, it would be their last feature film excursion as well. The cinematography is decent, average, and needs not to be discussed at any length. ​ A: Of the principle actors, Tanba Tetsurô as the Cat King is the only one of note that puts in a decent performance, but that in of itself is a tried and tested cliche get a character actor to play the villain so that it can feel the acting in your piece is worth noting. See almost all of Marvel's films for this trope. S: Nomi Yûji is one of the few folks who returned for this spin-off and while I cannot say I enjoyed their work as much as I did the first time around. I am not going to fault the sound department too much of this film, as I do believe they are second-most underappreciated members of the team right behind editors. PD: Given all the faults you can see shining through in other aspects of the film you can really get a sense that the PD was one of the few saving graces that kept this work from sliding down into a world where even Ghilbi diehards would struggle to defend. I know they would still find a way to do it, they would just feel dirty afterwards is all. BA: This is one of the few areas where I felt like there was an improvement on the original, though this might have been down to the fact that the team was allowed to go more in-depth with costumes and styles thus giving the film a touch more authenticity. That said we can see that many a background character was not given the same love and tenderness that appeared in Whisper in the Heart. EVO: How can something with such a short runtime feel so dull? The entertainment value is centred on the cat king, and he does not feature all that much. Leaving you with shallow jokes and guffaws that are not aimed at children, but more to parents who will think this is a cute movie, so it is okay if I sit my kid in front of it. If you are looking for a run of the mill Alice in wonderland clone that you can put on for your kids on a rainy Sunday afternoon. You found it. If you are looking for that magic that you want to inspire your kids with or leave a sense of charm upon them, I suggest you keep looking. ​ Notes: Some may say I am being harsh to this film, but the truth is this film was initially intended to be a straight to DVD release that started life as a promotional tool for a theme park, and it is the only sequel slash spin-off that Ghilbi has ever done. When you do factor in that a lot of the BIG 5 never went on to do much else, we can see that this film was not intended to be great and the craftsmanship really tells us that, so we must always remember we can find something charming and even let it bring us back our childhoods, but that does not necessarily mean it is an excellent work of art and I always want to keep that distance between favourite and greatest. They are not the same thing and likely never will be.

This is a typically confusing and odd product of Japanese animation that western audiences will struggle to enjoy.