A while back Amybear and I watched a japanese anime called The Cat Returns. The film is the magical tale of Haru, a girl who saves the Prince of Cats on the streets of Tokyo and is accidentally draw into a plot in the magical Kingdom of Cats. She gets out of the this trouble with the assistance of the Baron, a magical cat statue, and Muta, a big fat cat.
The Cat Returns is a prequel/sequel to Whisper of the Heart which we watched last night. Both are produced by Studio Ghibli, most famous in the US for producing Spirited Away (which won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature in 2001) and Princess Mononoke.
Whisper of the Heart is the story of girl named Shizumi. Shizumi is a bookworm who enjoys nothing more than reading fairytales. The usual teenage social dynamics ensue with boys declaring their affections for Shizumi or her friends. There are some weak love triangles in there too. The film is essentially a junior high romance. Finally, to prove herself, Shizumi decides that she wants to be a writer and spends the second half of the film working on a story so that she can prover herself to the boy she really likes.
The truth is that we watched the two films out of order which really messed with our minds. The Cat Returns is essentially a retelling of the story Shizumi writes in Whisper of the Heart. The Baron and Muta show up in both films, although in different roles. Except for a few scenes that occur in Shizumi's head, Whisper of the Heart is not a fanciful magical adventure. Whisper is Shizumi's coming of age story. The tone of the two films is pretty different and that was kind of jarring especially when we were expecting some sort of magical creature to pop out of nowhere as in most Studio Ghibli films like Spirited Away.
But it is a good film and is definitely good if you have kids old enough not to think of romance as yucky. But try to watch the two movies in the right order.
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