The Cat Returns

• 1. Introduction

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  The Cat Returns is a 2002 Studio Ghibli film directed by Hiroyuki Morita. Its premise arrives quickly. A shy high school girl named Haru Yoshioka saves a cat from an oncoming truck, and that cat turns out to be Prince Lune of the Cat Kingdom. She is offered the prince's hand in marriage and sent gifts of catnip and mice as thanks. Eventually taken to the Cat Kingdom against her will, she begins growing fangs, whiskers, a tail, cat ears, and a cat nose. The film opened in Japan on the 20th of July, 2002, and became that year's highest-grossing domestic production at the box office. It was the second Studio Ghibli theatrical feature ever directed by someone other than Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata. Morita arrived at the role through an unlikely route. A Japanese theme park's cancelled commission set the whole process in motion.

• 2. A Theme Park's Commission

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  In 1999, Studio Ghibli received an unusual request: a Japanese theme park wanted a 20-minute short film built around cats. Hayao Miyazaki took personal charge of defining what the short should contain. He specified three elements: the cat figurine Baron Humbert von Gikkingen, the large white cat Muta, and a mysterious antique shop. Aoi Hiiragi was commissioned to write a manga version of the same project. The theme park cancelled the commission before any film was made. Miyazaki repurposed the existing Cat Project materials rather than discarding them. The project became a training exercise for future Studio Ghibli directors, with its target length extended from 20 minutes to 45 minutes. Hiroyuki Morita had worked as an animator on My Neighbors the Yamadas in 1999. He was assigned the Cat Project and spent nine months producing 525 pages of storyboards based on Hiiragi's Baron manga. Miyazaki and producer Toshio Suzuki reviewed those storyboards and made a decision beyond the scope of any training exercise. They would expand the project into a full feature-length film, citing the main character Haru's 'believable feel to her.' Three outside studios, Telecom Animation Film, Production I.G, and DR Movie, joined in animating the finished feature, whose characters had roots in a Studio Ghibli film from seven years earlier.

• 3. The 1995 Inheritance

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  Whisper of the Heart, the Studio Ghibli film released in 1995, is formally listed as the film The Cat Returns spun off from. That earlier film features a girl writing a fantasy novel; in her imagined scenes, Baron Humbert von Gikkingen, a cat figurine, comes alive. The Cat Returns treats Baron as a real and independent figure rather than a fictional creation. He is described as a cat figurine given life by the work of his artist. Toto, a stone raven, comes to life by a similar force and accompanies Baron in the human world.

  Muta, the large white cat who guides Haru, had also appeared in Whisper of the Heart under the name Moon. In that earlier film, the same cat was cast as an antagonist. The Cat Returns reverses that characterization entirely. The film reveals Muta's past identity as 'Renaldo Moon,' a notorious outlaw in the Cat Kingdom. As Renaldo Moon, he had once devoured an entire lake of fish in a single sitting.

  Baron's physical appearance carries a history that stretches back to Hiiragi's original drawings. She illustrated him as a dark gray cat with large blue eyes and long pointed ears. Studio Ghibli redesigned him for Whisper of the Heart with orange-and-yellow fur, smaller green eyes, and shorter ears. That design passed unchanged into The Cat Returns.

  Yuki, the white cat maiden inside the Cat Kingdom, turns out to have been the voice that first guided Haru toward the Cat Bureau. She was repaying a childhood debt: Haru had once saved her from starvation by sharing fish crackers.

• 4. What the Manga Changed

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  Aoi Hiiragi's Baron manga was published in 2002 by Tokuma Shoten, the same year the film reached Japanese cinemas. Its plot follows the same broad arc, but the Cat Kingdom operates on entirely different terms in Hiiragi's version.

  Hiiragi portrayed the Cat Kingdom as a form of cat heaven, not a physical parallel dimension. Yuki was struck and killed by a vehicle before the manga's story begins. She appears within the Cat Kingdom as a spirit rather than a living palace servant.

  Natoru, a cat character, comes into Haru's room and pesters her in the manga's comedic ending, a scene the film does not contain.

  Hiiragi drew Haru with longer, darker hair than the Studio Ghibli character design uses. Muta's general appearance was one of the few elements that remained consistent between Hiiragi's illustrations and the film. When Walt Disney Pictures prepared an English-language version for American audiences, the studio assembled a cast of recognizable voices for the characters Hiiragi and Studio Ghibli had created.

• 5. The English Cast

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  Walt Disney Pictures assembled a voice cast for the English-language version that included Anne Hathaway as Haru. Cary Elwes took the role of Baron Humbert von Gikkingen, and Tim Curry voiced the Cat King. Peter Boyle played Muta, while Elliott Gould voiced Toto, the stone raven. Judy Greer voiced Yuki and Kristen Bell appeared as Hiromi, Haru's friend from the human world.

  The English version was released on DVD in the United States on the 22nd of February, 2005, bundled alongside Nausicaa of the Valley of the Wind and Porco Rosso. Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment released the film on Blu-ray in the United States on the 16th of June, 2015. GKIDS re-released the DVD and Blu-ray on the 16th of January, 2018, under a new deal with Studio Ghibli. Before any English version existed, the film had already ranked seventh among all theatrical releases in Japanese cinemas that year.

• 6. Reception

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  The Japan Media Arts Festival awarded The Cat Returns its Excellence Prize in 2002. Critics found the film to be an entertaining if lighter entry among Studio Ghibli's theatrical releases.

  Lisa Nesselson, writing in Variety, called it 'catchy entertainment for kids and adults' and highlighted a 'thrillingly imaginative' finale. Michael Booth of The Denver Post detected a different sensibility in Morita's direction. Booth wrote that the director had 'a slightly cruder, more realistic sense of the world and its looniness than does Miyazaki.' Neil Smith of the BBC wrote that the film 'can't quite match the invention of 2003 Oscar-winner Spirited Away.' Smith called it 'an enchanting, magical fable with a twisted vein of surrealism.' Metacritic aggregated 11 critics' reviews and assigned a score of 70 out of 100, placing the film in the 'generally favorable reviews' category.

  Chizuru Ikewaki voiced Haru in the original Japanese version, while Tetsuro Tanba played the Cat King. The Japanese cast and the English dub represent entirely separate performances of the same story.