Ride the Shinkai wave
Creative Staff:
Story: Makoto Shinkai
Art: Tsubasa Yamaguchi
Translation: Kumar Sivasubramanian
What They Say:
This is the story of Miyu, a woman which lives alone with her cat, Chobi. As Miyu navigates the world of adulthood, she discovers both the freedom and loneliness that come with living independently, and Chobi learns of the outside world through her actions. Time drifts slowly for Miyu and her cat, but the harsh realities of the world soon catch up…
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
She and Her Cat was originally a 5-minute original net animation made by none other than Makoto Shinkai back in 1999. Regardless (or perhaps due to) its short run-time, Shinkai was able to build a simple, yet quirky enough world surrounding the mundane, melancholic life of a cat in love with its owner. It perfectly encapsulated that rainy-day feeling of longing but uncertainty that Shinkai has continued integrating into his longer-running films to come after it.
With this manga re-telling, Shinkai is able to maintain the entire feel of his original work—the volume itself feeling like a short, yet thoroughly enjoyable read. Even just starting from the manga’s cover, it’s unique in that it has a certain inviting shine to it that’s immediately betrayed by its non-standard, dull, ordinary feel. Like the animated short, the manga is primarily told through the lens of a cat who observes his beautiful owner throughout her day-to-day life. Unlike the original, however, the owner has a voice of her own, allowing for slightly more in terms of scope that the story’s world encompasses. Between Chobi the cat’s unconditional love for a woman he can only understand through emotions and actions, and his owner Miyu’s growing pains as she adjusts to a life of independence post-graduation, the narrative is melancholic yet reflective. Dialogue, while probably just as plentiful as it would be in any other standard manga, feels a lot more sparse than that. Sounds of a phone ringing, or overheard conversations from afar, create this world of loneliness spanning for months on end. And rather than having each chapter cover a self-contained topic or story, Shinkai simply has Chobi observing his owner and whatever mundane problems she may be going through—it’s a narrative equivalent of people-watching in every way possible better exemplified by Yamaguchi’s expressive art that bounces back and forth between Miyu’s stresses, and Chobi’s more cartoonish design.
While there have been plenty of similar manga out there (Nagata Kabi‘s My Lesbian Experience with Romance making quite the splash when released stateside earlier this year, and practically all of Inio Asano’s works really digging into the core of loneliness), Shinkai’s She and Her Cat stands out in just how little it stands out. He never bothers to pick apart the topic of loneliness or listlessness as a young adult, nor does he even bother providing a solution. Rather than delving into a single theme, he invests his time in creating a mood more than anything else. You feel Chobi’s not-quite-mature-yet love for Miyu. You feel Miyu’s uncertainty, and lack of confidence as she continues her life as an office worker. And while you’re never given anything conclusive by the manga’s end, you’re still satisfied in that as mundane as their lives get, the two still choose to power through its occasional hiccups in an attempt to make it worthwhile.
In Summary:
She and Her Cat is the kind of story you can finish in a single sitting and feel pleasantly content with afterwards. Shinkai bombards you with emotion through the simplest of actions and few words actually spoken. And while it never bothers to give anything conclusive, the intentional open-endedness proves satisfactory regardless.
Content Grade: B
Art Grade: B
Packaging Grade: A
Text/Translation Grade: B
Age Rating: Teen
Released By: Vertical Comics
Release Date: August 1, 2017
MSRP: $12.95
