Of the kids in the Ghibli playground, Neko no Ongaeshi is one of the outsiders. While it’s really a spin-off of Mimi-o Sumaseba, its premise derived from a minor plot point therein, in other ways it seems considerably more distant from the rest of the Ghibli films than they are from one another.
For one thing, it is the sole film thus far directed by Morita Hiroyuki, and evidently had a smaller budget than the films the studio was making at the time (Sen to Chihiro was released the previous year). For another, it's a return to the more childish style of slapstick and scaled-down epic adventure the studio hasn't really employed since Laputa - even Totoro had a very different take on the winsome, being more of an adult look at childhood than an adult's attempt to appeal to a child. And then there's the fact that for once, the human cast isn't drawn in Miyazaki's style, something I was rather glad to see.
A young girl called Haru rescues a cat from a road accident, and is surprised when it thanks her in human speech, though not nearly as surprised as she is when she’s visited by the Cat King, who in return for her saving his son's life wants to take her to his kingdom to become a princess. Haru doesn’t want to be taken away from her home, nor does she want to marry the cat she saved, and doesn’t know what to do. When a voice tells her to seek help from a 'Cat Bureau', she meets Muta and The Baron, both from Mimi-o Sumaseba, enlisting their help just before she is whisked away.
It's a freewheeling and charming story. You can tell that the writer whose manga served as basis for the screenplay (or perhaps Miyazaki, who is credited with the concept) simply came up with a nice typical story basis (normal girl has mysterious things happen to her) and ran with it. It's not a sophisticated plot, nor is it devoid of dubious coincidences, but it's fun and fast-paced, with lots of big setpieces, an interesting two-act structure (the two different worlds being very different) and some great little touches. Lots of little details from early in the plot come back later with that satisfying feeling of a nice little twist, and the characters are great - The Baron is undeniably very cool (another example of the refined upper-class character that seems so very Western yet works so well in anime – like Shinku in Rozen Maiden or Saber in Fate/Stay Night), the greedy and lazy Muta is a perfect foil and companion to him, and a variety of other minor characters really leave a mark. For example, there's Yuki, the sweet cat who looks like she escaped from a Disney film, the hilarious slightly-sinister-tour-guide-type, the crow who provides a great mise-en-scene at the end...and then there's Haru, whose clutzy manner and bewildered asides make her very endearing, in a similar vein to Sen/Chihiro. Indeed, the two characters are close, but while we're encouraged to see the real vulnerability of Sen/Chihiro, Haru's world is purposely more silly, more superficial, more safe. She is very rarely left without friendly guardians, and it never really feels like she’s a little girl lost.
Yes, the tone of the film is very light. There is a lot of slapstick, from hapless and inept guards falling over to the defenestration of some unfortunate felines who fail to adequately entertain the King and his guests, which at first looks like it's going to be horrible, before you realise it's played for laughs. The climactic duel is far from dramatic, and there are a lot of very silly clichés - a tower blown up with a big button on a remote control, a clownish character's formidable past being revealed, a character having appeared earlier than you might realise at first, but as I said before, these little twists feel very neat, and make you smile, make you laugh, make you realise this is not a serious action piece but a cute and somewhat daft comedy. And it works in that idiom well.
However, that does make it feel rather more like a Saturday Morning kids' show than most of the later Ghibli films. This impression is reinforced by the cheaper art and animation than is typical of the studio in the last 10-15 years. While some of the backgrounds are superlative, be they modern Japanese streets or the fantasy Cat Kingdom, and the animation is smooth, art is often simplified when there are a lot of characters, or they're moving in a complex way - this is especially visible when a lot of guards are on the screen at once. The colouring is much simpler than in Sen to Chihiro or Mononoke-Hime, and overall it's all less of a spectacle than I'm accustomed to from Ghibli, but frankly the material suited it well and it was all good fun. Also, I’m glad my Japanese is getting good enough that I mostly rely on subs only for vocabulary words now – the reinterpreted English version (subtitles for the dub rather than a straight translation) used a lot of painful cat-related puns and really made some characters far more abrasive and hard to like.
This is far from the best Ghibli film. Indeed, it's nothing special. But it's immensely enjoyable and a joy to watch; I very much doubt anyone who saw it would feel they'd wasted their 75 minutes, even if the experience wasn’t exactly life-changing. I'd say that after Porco Rosso, this was the best of Ghibli's light adventure movies. Not up with the heavier classics, but closer to them than the likes of Laputa or Nausicaa, in large part because it achieves what it sets out to do.
Besides, I have to say I find nekomimi (cat ears) inordinately cute. I blame watching Thundercats as a child. Not that they have nekomimi...
(Originally written 22.10.06)
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