It’s worth noting that the two films in question, up until this point, were the only two Ghibli films not directed by studio founders Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata. It’s a cute idea from Ghibli, a studio that has often littered its works with bits extracted from their own canon, but in the case of these two films, it shows a divergence from their usual route of blurring fantasy and reality, one that’s unique in the studio’s filmography. However much The Cat Returns ticks the boxes of a Ghibli adventure, its roots as the product of a fictional character’s imagination cannot be escaped. Soon Haru is talking to cats and travelling through portals with the usual wild abandon Ghibli applies to its young go-getters. Where Shizuku was creating her fantasy world, Haru is led to one after saving a cat from certain death, only for it to turn out that she’s saved the life of royalty. The film has a teenage girl of its own (Haru) at the centre of the story, but this time they take a more literal step into a new world, The Kingdom of the Cats. The Cat Returns is Ghibli’s only spin-off, but that doesn’t mean it doesn’t stand up by itself. The studio even hired manga artist Aoi Hiiragi (writer of the Whisper of the Heart manga) to write a manga alongside the making of the film, lending to the idea that The Cat Returns may be a product of a fictional character’s imagination.
#The cat returns manga series#
Now, there’s nothing saying that The Cat Returns was written by Shizuku, but Ghibli’s spin-off could certainly be an instalment in a series of stories written by her. Interesting then, that Ghibli should go down the path of exploring a world created by one of their own characters.
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These brief daydreaming are just glimpses into a world that Shizuku’s created. These inspirations, taking part in Shizuku’s seemingly realist life in West Tokyo, act as Shizuku’s chaperones to her imaginary world of flying high with The Baron, up above the world of artist Naohisa Inoue’s nature-laden fantasy landscapes, lending an ethereal, impressionistic quality that separates Shizuku from other Ghibli animations. This grumpy dumpling of a cat has also played a part in Shizuku’s personal life, leading her to the antique shop that plays host to The Baron earlier in the film. The story also features a rather rotund cat by the name of “Moon” or “Muta”. The main character of Shizuku’s story, The Baron, is based on a small but dapper ornamental cat she finds herself drawn to in an antique shop. Whisper of the Heart takes its title from a story Shizuku completes towards the end of the film. Though this transition may be one rife with a surreality that only Ghibli could dream up, it’s also one whose boundaries exists within the imagination of 14-year-old Shizuku, Whisper of the Heart‘s central character and yearning creative.
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There are two films, however, that deal with this jump between worlds with a divide that you can’t make in a single leap, focused on the journey of a creative, and of the inner self. This idea that the imagination is a place that can be found or escaped to is something that has permeated the work of the studio since they began. In our second edition of Studio Ghibli Sundays, Harry Jones looks at how reality and fantasy entwine over the company’s only conjoined films: Whisper of the Heart and The Cat Returns.īe it fumbling through the trees at the bottom of the garden in My Neighbor Totoro or stumbling upon an abandoned amusement park in Spirited Away, the creative team behind Ghibli has always been concerned with the idea of crossing borders from the everyday into the magical.