The story of The Cat Returns lends itself to such amicability and charm that it’s near impossible to feel miserable after watching seventy-five minutes of topnotch animation and beautifully harmonic music. With the help of Baron, Muta and Toto (as well as others who I won’t name here), Haru finds herself in the heart of the Cat Kingdom and a great escape from the Cat King’s castle before she permanently transforms into a cat. Distraught, Haru seeks out the Cat Bureau after hearing a kind voice suggest so, and finds herself in the company of Muta the obese white cat, Toto the raven, and Baron Humbert von Gikkingen, owner of the Cat Bureau. It turns out she saved the Cat Prince Lune of the Cat Kingdom, and finds herself bombarded by (unwanted) generosity from the Cat King and his subjects as they fill her yard with catnip, her locker with mice and arrange her marriage to Lune. The premise is this: Haru, a young high school girl who periodically runs late to school and is undeniably unsure of herself, rescues an unusual cat from getting hit while it crosses the street. This makes The Cat Returns the second theatrical Ghibli feature to be directed by someone other than Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata, a definitively unique trait in Ghibli’s current filmography of eighteen completed films. However, over the course of nine months Morita translated Hiiragi’s manga story into 525 pages of storyboard, thus influencing Miyazaki’s producer Toshio Suzuki to green light a theatrical length release mainly because Morita’s depiction of Hiiragi’s female protagonist, Haru, felt genuinely real and believable. The “Cat Project” was then used as testing grounds for future Ghibli directors, intended to be 45 minute short, and eventually Morita was chosen to proceed with the project. Baron proved to be so popular that Ghibli was requested by a Japanese theme park to create a 20-minute short starring cats, and though the project was eventually canceled manga artist Aoi Hiiragi was commissioned and created the manga equivalent of the short, titled Baron: The Cat Returns (バロン 猫の男爵), featuring Miyazaki’s envisioned characters Baron and Muta, as well as a mysterious antique shop.
Additionally, The Cat Returns is an indirect sequel to a previous Ghibli film, Whisper of the Heart, for a unique reason: in Whisper of the Heart, a girl writes and draws out a story about a cat named Baron Humbert von Gikkingen, a sophisticated feline who comes to the aid of those who need it, and his companion Muta, a large white cat who’s insatiable appetite is just as big (if not larger). The Cat Returns is a unique feature in Ghibli’s filmography because it was neither directed by veterans Hayao Miyazaki ( My Neighbor Totoro) nor Isao Takahata ( Grave of the Fireflies), but by Hiroyuki Morita who began as a animator in the 1999 Ghibli film My Neighbors the Yamadas.
Studio Ghibli’s The Cat Returns is such a film, and I recently had the good fortune of watching it after a tumultuous couple of days. There are few movies that are so lovely, so absolutely lovely that you simply can’t find anything negative to say about them once the credits begin to roll in.
If you find yourself troubled by something mysterious or a problem that’s hard to solve, there’s a place you can go, a place where…