The Cat Returns

anne hathaway as Haru

Don't you cats know anything? I hate mice, I don't eat them! I'm allergic to cat-tails, and catnip does nothing for me!

~ Haru

quick fox: B+

cary elwes as The Baron

winding dragon

Years ago, I was wandering around Powers Comics in Green Bay when I discovered a manga titled Baron: The Cat Returns. It caught my attention because the cover depicted a gray cat strutting his elegant fashion in a black, Victorian-style dress coat with a blue polka-dotted bow tie. The cat, presumably the baron, wore a fancy top hat and leaned on a cane. The author’s name read, “Aoi Hiiragi,” and though it sounded familiar I didn’t give it much notice. 

After flipping through the pages for all of three seconds, I thought, “meh, what the heck?” and bought it. 

Little did I know that the innocent book purchase would throw me into the quirky kingdom of cats. The story is about a young schoolgirl named Haru who saves an inattentive cat from being run over in the street. It just so happens that the cat is none other than Prince Lune, the gallant son of the oafish Cat King. The King’s subjects (meaning well) bestow her with many gifts and honors—including kidnapping Haru and taking her to the kingdom to be wed to Prince Lune. With the help of the Baron and his friends Muta (a marshmallow-shaped cat) and Toto (a sarcastic crow), Haru must find a way to escape the cat kingdom and return to the human world.

I remember falling in love with the manga because it reminded of the whimsical fantasy worlds of Hayao Miyazaki. But then I discovered that the reason it reminded me so much of Studio Ghibli was because it is Studio Ghibli!

There’s an interesting backstory behind it too. In the 1995 Studio Ghibli film Whisper of the Heart, which was based from an Aoi Hiiragi’s manga (so that’s why the name sounded familiar!), Shizuku writes a fantasy story about the “Baron,” who is based on a cat statuette she sees in an antique shop. The tale was so popular that a Japanese theme park commissioned Studio Ghibli for a twenty-minute animated short (it was later rescinded). Hiiragi was hired to create a manga based from this short film. Later, Hayao Miyazaki pitched the concept work done for the short film and the manga as a feature-length movie, and The Cat Returns (2002) was given to Hiroyuki Morita to direct.

I knew then that I needed to see this movie. 

Studio Ghibli’s 12th film (and first that wasn’t Miyazaki or Isao Takahata) is one of my personal favorites. It’s charming, silly, and absolutely hilarious. The movie’s plot is practically a panel-by-panel adaptation of the manga, though with a bit more entertaining visual gags and witty commentary. The (English) voice acting is a lot of fun too—Anne Hathaway, Cary Elwes , and Tim Curry are a few of the prominent actors. 

While it may not have the same visual imagination as Princess Mononoke (1997) or Spirited Away (2001), The Cat Returns is one of the more underrated Studio Ghibli films. It’s a nonstop comedic adventure filled with cat puns. Though perhaps if you’ve had one too many traumatic experiences with cat scratches and bitten fingers, then this film might not be meant for you.

Tim Curry as the Cat king