_I’ve had people tell me that I’m smart my whole life. I’ve had multiple people tell me I’m the smartest person they know. I know it’s meant as a compliment, but even so, it personally just serves as a reminder to me of my failings in life. Any time I hear it, I always think to myself “If I’m so smart, why am I like this?” Why do I feel like I don’t know how to function around other people? Why do I feel like I’ve got so little figured out? If I’m so smart, why do compliments make me sad?
“A peculiar girl transforms into a cat to catch her crush’s attention. But before she realizes it, the line between human and animal starts to blur.“
It’s amazing how smoking has almost disappeared from American cinema but they’re totally lighting up in an anime romance about a girl turning into a cat. A Whisker Away.
_Aww, this was a cute movie, that also hit hard at times, y’know? The main character, Miyo, is nicknamed “Muge” by her classmates, which the localization says is short for “Miss Ultra Gaga and Eccentric,” which… absolutely is a localization choice, because it has to mean something in Japanese that would take a bunch of in-world explaining that there probably wasn’t time for as they try to match the dialog to mouth movements.
Anyways, Miyo has a… rambunctious personality. But it’s revealed over the course of the movie that her overzealousness is a way for her to hide her true feelings. Well, her always shows her true feelings in regards to her crush, Hinode, but she’s basically just hurting inside. All of the time.
I don’t have a rambunctious personality, but I’m feeling called out here.
There’s a part late in the movie when she’s in the Cat Village and meets a bunch of cats who were previously human. They all ran away from their troubles as humans, thinking it’d be easier if they were cats. One of them said that he didn’t know how to love or how to accept love from anyone else, and so he became a cat.
I’m not a human now permanently trapped in the body of a cat, but I’m feeling called out here.
_OK, I’ve been jumping around. Other than the blurb, I haven’t actually mentioned that the main hook of the story is that Miyu obtains a magical mask from a cat-man that lets her turn into a cat. When she turns into a cat, she hangs out at Hinode’s house and he’s affectionate towards her. When she’s human-ass Miyu, he basically just ignores her overbearing ass.
I actually think the blurb is really misleading… maybe? I’m not actually sure, the movie itself doesn’t make it clear.
So when we’re first introduced to Miyu and Hinode’s “relationship,” it’s at the beginning of class, and Miyu’s friend, Yori, is asking her why she keeps trying to get his attention when he actively tries to ignore everything she does and doesn’t show any emotion towards her. Miyu tells her that he has shown her affection, they had a moment at the festival, and it shows this sweet moment they had with Hinode opening up to her. Then later on, it’s revealed that the moment they shared together happened when Miyu was in her cat form. Hinode was feeling down, because he couldn’t express his feelings to anyone. He came across a “stray” cat, and was able to tell kitty the things that he couldn’t bring himself to say to another person.
I’m pretty sure that this was actually their first meaningful interaction, and where her crush on Hinode started. The thing is, it’s not explicitly stated in the movie, and the plot blurb makes it sound like she had a pre-existing crush on him and then got her hands on a way to turn into a cat for the explicit purpose of getting close to him.
And those are two very different scenarios. The former is a young girl in pain, trying to adjust to her mother leaving her and a new stepmom moving in, feeling as if nobody cares for her, latching on to the first feelings of affection she can remember anyone showing her. She’s hurt, young and misguided. The latter is a crazy yandere trope that’s typically played for laughs but in a movie that’s trying to be a serious adolescent romance. That’s why I say I’m pretty sure it’s the former…
… but the reason I’m only “pretty sure” is because, like I said, it’s never actually explicitly stated as such. Even going back to check after I finished the movie, yup, it’s ambiguous as it’s shown. It’s just something that I kind of figured as it went along, and a lot of the movie just seemed to click more afterwards. But the fact that it’s so easy to misinterpret is a storytelling issue. If you accept that as the origin story, then the movie does have a legitimate sweetness to it. If you don’t, then it’s hard to get invested in Miyu’s character development because she starts out giving impressions of Delusional Stalker.
_I liked how in the second half of the movie, there’s suddenly a variation of Cat Face/Off. Genuinely not expecting that. Right down to the “I’m starting to have hunches about this person only knowing information I told to a cat… could it… ?” hunches that it would take a really long time for a normal person to start having.
_Stop by tomorrow for a very special entry. We’re going to an actual movie theater to watch a special event – a theatrical screening of Final Fantasy VII: Advent Children. I never thought I’d see the day. See you then~
...and one head can never die 