A Whisker Away Anime Review

A charming tale of young love and cats.

What They Say:
The line between human and animal starts to blur after a girl transforms herself into a cat.

The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Having enjoyed a couple of other Studio Colorido anime features over the last couple of years, I was definitely curious about their latest project with A Whisker Away. The film was actually set for a Japanese theatrical release but found itself victim to the COVID-19 pandemic and ended up with a quick Netflix acquisition. We ended up with a worldwide debut that made for a great way to see the film with its originally intended audience, though I hope it does get some form of theatrical release as it’s really nicely done. Based on the screenplay by Mari Okada, it’s directed by Junichi Sato and Tomotaka Shibayama as an original work. It’s got all the hallmarks of a family film and you’d easily put it on the same shelf as any number of Studio Ghibli movies for a lot of reasons.

The film, coming in just a bit under two hours, focuses on two middle school students who are struggling with their lives. Miyo is an outgoing young woman who has found herself with immense feelings towards a boy named Hinode. She can’t help but to express them as she wants him to feel the happiness and joy his presence brings her. She’s very focused on this and defensive of him in situations where he’s not even there but other people are talking badly about him. She’s the young idealist with the intention of doing right and being helpful but often does it in a way that can be kind of problematic for those around her. She’s also gotten to know Hinode quite well as she was given a mask that lets her become a cat, a cute white kitten that visited Hinode. He ended up taking her in as a stray that visits from time to time and named her Taro. And through that, she was able to spend a lot of time with him and fell even more in love with him as she saw the real him without any walls up.

Miyo has her own complex family situation with split parents and her father remarrying and that extends out to some tough scenes to watch. Hinode has his issues as well at home and all of this makes the two of them feel very out of place when at home. But it’s her thoughts of him that makes her happy and able to get through it while Hinode spends time with his grandfather learning his craft some and coping with how his older sister acts from time to time. Mostly, he focuses on his schoolwork which is why he’s getting ahead as there are goals to achieve. But even that causes him trouble and some of the boys are jealous and acting out, believing him to be cheating. And to get a little bit of revenge at one point, one of them is there when Miyo gives Hinode a love letter and he ends up swiping it and reading it to a bunch of the class. It’s something that, sadly, was familiar in my middle school days in seeing how things played out and watching it here is hard as you feel for Miyo and the uncomfortable situation that Hinode is put in.

The calmness through much of this for Miyo is that she can slide on that cat mask and become Taro the cat, light of foot, able to go where she needs to, and get the comfort she needs from Hinode without him knowing. But the halfway mark puts her in a bad spot as she begins to wish for that life more and the elder cat that gifted it to her collects on it, putting her into the position of becoming a cat in full and unable to understand people anymore. That comes as her real-life issues are getting more complicated and causes a disappearance that sets everyone to look for her. But while we follow her as she ends up on this path to cat-dom, it expands its focus to be on Hinode more as he’s given the clues as to where she may be and discovers the secret world of cats and has to take it on in order to save her – and really discover what his feelings are along the way.

In a sense, I certainly won’t say this is the most original film in the world. It’s a story that’s familiar and based on many a fable and folktale, just taken to a modern and expand storytelling view. But what the creative team did here was to make it strong in execution. Studio Colorido delighted me initially with Typhoon Noruda and its design work and some of its emotional beats but they really did a number on me with Penguin Highway. With its focus on cats here there’s a lot to like because they’re beautifully animated and the adorable factor is high. I really liked everything that they did with the cats, and particularly Cat Island where they get some really neat creativity out on display, but what won me over was Miyo herself as she just wanted to express her happiness. Providing that in contrast to the struggles at home that are weighing her down really worked wonderfully as so much is just kept quiet and internal, with only the edges of it bleeding out from time to time.

In Summary:
A Whisker Away delivers exactly what I was hoping for. It’s got a solid serious undertone to it with what our leads are going through and the seriousness of the transformation situation. But it also expresses a lot of joy and excitement throughout in a lot of different ways. It’s a good movie that provides a solid balance for the two main leads and lets them have their time to shine and explore what they’re going through. There are a few studios competing to figure out a kind of post-Ghibli feature film style and Studio Colorido has a good handle on their position with films like this. It’s definitely great that it ended up on Netflix and is able to expose it to so many people at a time when they’re really looking for new things.

Content Grade: B+

Released By: Netflix
Release Date: June 18th, 2020
Running Time: 104 Minutes

Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Sony PlayStation3 Blu-ray player via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.