April 21, 2016
She and Her Cat—Everything Flows
She and Her Cat—Everything Flows consists of four eight-minute episodes that tell a complete story. If you know how long cats live, and that we meet Daru (the cat) when she is in elementary school, the story of a life. Except it doesn't quite end like that.
But, well, it does.
As I've noted previously, mono no a'wa're is Shinkai's specialty, referring to the classical Japanese aesthetic concept of the sublime found in the ephemeral nature of things, of the beauty found in loss. Or as Jung phrased it, "In the shadow is the gold."
Kazuya Sakamoto tells a surprisingly upbeat story about what is too often a tediously downbeat subject. Death and estrangement haunt these scant thirty minutes without being mentioned. But so do rebirth and reunion. (A cat as the narrative point-of-view doesn't hurt either.)
A'wa're isn't about gloom or nihilism. It's the simple recognition that nothing lasts forever. Meaning the bad things in life don't last forever either. Cats have nine lives, after all, which makes them at least as long-lived as humans. The things that are no longer here aren't really gone.
They've simply come around again in a different form, including a cat like Daru.
She and Her Cat—Everything Flows can be viewed in its entirety on Crunchyroll.
Labels: anime, anime reviews, cats, personal favs, shinkai
January 15, 2015
Cat girls
In Japan, the cat girl occupies the same pop-culture space as the bunny girl. Except that the Playboy Bunny logo itself is so benign that it adorns a fashion line aimed at teen girls (including school uniforms).
Anime's most popular bunny girl is probably Haruhi Suzumiya (here playing at a high school concert). The kemonomimi (獣耳) or "animal ears" is a well-nigh ubiquitous meme in anime, manga, and cosplay.
Ge-Ge-Ge no Kitarou, Shigeru Mizuki's long-running supernatural manga and anime series, featured a character whose name is "Neko Musume," literally "Cat Girl" (猫娘). She's a true werecat (bakeneko).
More recently, the cat girl has risen again to the fore, from girls pretending to be cats (K-On):
To girls who actually sprout ears and tails (Strike Witches):
As it turns out, the bakeneko (化け猫) has a long history in Japan, with literary references reaching as far back as the 12th century (click to enlarge).
Anime's most popular bunny girl is probably Haruhi Suzumiya (here playing at a high school concert). The kemonomimi (獣耳) or "animal ears" is a well-nigh ubiquitous meme in anime, manga, and cosplay.
Ge-Ge-Ge no Kitarou, Shigeru Mizuki's long-running supernatural manga and anime series, featured a character whose name is "Neko Musume," literally "Cat Girl" (猫娘). She's a true werecat (bakeneko).
More recently, the cat girl has risen again to the fore, from girls pretending to be cats (K-On):
To girls who actually sprout ears and tails (Strike Witches):
As it turns out, the bakeneko (化け猫) has a long history in Japan, with literary references reaching as far back as the 12th century (click to enlarge).
 |
| Courtesy Wikipedia Commons. |
Labels: anime, art, cats, fantasy, japanese culture
September 08, 2014
Iwago's Cats
As a tribute to my sister's cat Aurora, who departed for kitty heaven last week at the ripe old age of 19½ (that's 95 in human years), here's a wonderful show about cats.
Though I'm not a pet person, cats project a "leave-me-alone" aura I respect. A neighborhood cat likes to nap on my back porch. Now and then another cat shows up (I don't understand the appeal of my back porch) and they get one of those "When are you going to leave?" vs. "No, you first" standoffs.
Sometimes, company is neither desired nor appreciated. Hottoite (ほっといて): "Leave me alone and mind your own business." The term is discussed in the first video at 6:30 as a particular feline characteristic. "Unfortunately," Iwago observes, "cats aren't necessarily happy to be photographed."
I totally get it.
Dogs evolved to be attentive and empathic human companions, but the whole "give me attention" business gets wearying (that and treating the entire outdoors as a toilet). The neighbor's dog obsessively announces every change in the status quo, including things it's seen several hundred times already.
Meaning everybody and everything it doesn't actually live with. Clouds. Its own shadow. The wind. Passing neutrinos. Bark bark bark bark bark bark. Take a breath. Bark bark bark bark bark bark. And so on and so forth. Cats are infinitely more tolerable mammals to share your immediate environment with.
Which perhaps explains why Iwago's Cats (「岩合光昭の世界ネコ歩き」) is one of my favorite programs on NHK. It's produced by the same team that does Somewhere Street, NHK's equally understated travel show.
As the title suggests, wildlife videographer Mitsuaki Iwago travels around the world capturing the life of cats in various urban and semi-rural environments. One difference with Somewhere Street is that the visual narrative will break the fourth wall and show Iwago talking about and interacting with the cats.
Like Somewhere Street, it's a serene and laid-back travel show that's more about the people than the places. Iwago treats the cats as the people and shows us the world through their eyes and activities. The cats really do start to take on the attributes of fully sentient beings.
Iwago's Cats is one of those NHK shows that makes wonder why nobody's licensed it. The cultural references are all local. The narration is mostly off-screen and (sounds) improvised, so could be easily dubbed (by a cat-loving actor with a mellifluous accent.) But many episodes can be found on YouTube.
Though I'm not a pet person, cats project a "leave-me-alone" aura I respect. A neighborhood cat likes to nap on my back porch. Now and then another cat shows up (I don't understand the appeal of my back porch) and they get one of those "When are you going to leave?" vs. "No, you first" standoffs.
Sometimes, company is neither desired nor appreciated. Hottoite (ほっといて): "Leave me alone and mind your own business." The term is discussed in the first video at 6:30 as a particular feline characteristic. "Unfortunately," Iwago observes, "cats aren't necessarily happy to be photographed."
I totally get it.
Dogs evolved to be attentive and empathic human companions, but the whole "give me attention" business gets wearying (that and treating the entire outdoors as a toilet). The neighbor's dog obsessively announces every change in the status quo, including things it's seen several hundred times already.
Meaning everybody and everything it doesn't actually live with. Clouds. Its own shadow. The wind. Passing neutrinos. Bark bark bark bark bark bark. Take a breath. Bark bark bark bark bark bark. And so on and so forth. Cats are infinitely more tolerable mammals to share your immediate environment with.
Which perhaps explains why Iwago's Cats (「岩合光昭の世界ネコ歩き」) is one of my favorite programs on NHK. It's produced by the same team that does Somewhere Street, NHK's equally understated travel show.
As the title suggests, wildlife videographer Mitsuaki Iwago travels around the world capturing the life of cats in various urban and semi-rural environments. One difference with Somewhere Street is that the visual narrative will break the fourth wall and show Iwago talking about and interacting with the cats.
Like Somewhere Street, it's a serene and laid-back travel show that's more about the people than the places. Iwago treats the cats as the people and shows us the world through their eyes and activities. The cats really do start to take on the attributes of fully sentient beings.
Iwago's Cats is one of those NHK shows that makes wonder why nobody's licensed it. The cultural references are all local. The narration is mostly off-screen and (sounds) improvised, so could be easily dubbed (by a cat-loving actor with a mellifluous accent.) But many episodes can be found on YouTube.
Labels: cats, japanese tv, kate, nhk, personal favs, television
August 23, 2012
Havahart
My previous post raises the question of why we had a bunch of live animal traps sitting around the house. Specifically, these were Havahart traps, and I see that the basic design has changed little over the past four decades or so.
Our suburban street in upstate New York abutted several acres of swampy forest, undeveloped because of the high water table. I've always thought it'd be amusing--as a "performance art" sort of thing--to campaign to have the EPA label it a "wetlands."
Then again, I'm old enough to remember when a "wetlands" was a mosquito hazard responsible people filled in and turned into something useful.
Anyway, I thought it'd be cool to "domesticate" the critters scurrying around our little patch of wilderness. It took one frantic squirrel racing through the house to learn that wild animals are not cute and cuddly like in Disney cartoons.
Trap one in a small, enclosed area and it basically wants to rip your face off. Thinking back on it now, I'm a little surprised I didn't lose any digits or catch rabies while on that particular learning curve.
The traps were next employed when some of my brother's white mice escaped. Considering the curious ways many of them croaked, I'm convinced the pet store picked them up cheap from a defunct pharmaceutical project.
Though this wasn't a Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH caper (great book). Somebody left the top off the converted aquarium.
A perfect job for a predatory cat, but Cat #1 couldn't have cared less. It was like asking Hemingway to shoot ducks in a pond. This cat preferred to catch animals in the wild and proudly deposit the gory trophies on the front porch.
Incidentally, Cat #2 couldn't be bothered to even chase wild things. It eventually ended up in the bishop's barn. Our bishop was a true, exurbia-dwelling gentleman farmer who kept a couple of cows and chickens and the like.
The bishop's attitude towards cats was the same as Rudyard Kipling's: "If you don't work you die." Cat #2 sized up the options and recovered its Darwinian instincts pretty darn fast.
After that, the traps came to the rescue of General Electric. Then the squirrels and chipmunks burrowing into my father's vegetable garden were targeted (following Cat #1's demise). I recall the blueberry bushes being a favorite attraction.
They didn't get the liquid nitrogen treatment. Rather, we'd carry them to the other side of the woods and let them go, hoping they didn't have a good sense of direction.
Then again, I'm old enough to remember when a "wetlands" was a mosquito hazard responsible people filled in and turned into something useful.
Anyway, I thought it'd be cool to "domesticate" the critters scurrying around our little patch of wilderness. It took one frantic squirrel racing through the house to learn that wild animals are not cute and cuddly like in Disney cartoons.
Trap one in a small, enclosed area and it basically wants to rip your face off. Thinking back on it now, I'm a little surprised I didn't lose any digits or catch rabies while on that particular learning curve.
The traps were next employed when some of my brother's white mice escaped. Considering the curious ways many of them croaked, I'm convinced the pet store picked them up cheap from a defunct pharmaceutical project.
Though this wasn't a Mrs. Frisby and the Rats of NIMH caper (great book). Somebody left the top off the converted aquarium.
A perfect job for a predatory cat, but Cat #1 couldn't have cared less. It was like asking Hemingway to shoot ducks in a pond. This cat preferred to catch animals in the wild and proudly deposit the gory trophies on the front porch.
Incidentally, Cat #2 couldn't be bothered to even chase wild things. It eventually ended up in the bishop's barn. Our bishop was a true, exurbia-dwelling gentleman farmer who kept a couple of cows and chickens and the like.
The bishop's attitude towards cats was the same as Rudyard Kipling's: "If you don't work you die." Cat #2 sized up the options and recovered its Darwinian instincts pretty darn fast.
After that, the traps came to the rescue of General Electric. Then the squirrels and chipmunks burrowing into my father's vegetable garden were targeted (following Cat #1's demise). I recall the blueberry bushes being a favorite attraction.
They didn't get the liquid nitrogen treatment. Rather, we'd carry them to the other side of the woods and let them go, hoping they didn't have a good sense of direction.
Labels: autobiography, cats, environmentalism, science
January 25, 2006
The Cat Returns
The Cat Returns is the most light-hearted and purely comedic of Studio Ghibli films. It is a sequel to Whispers of the Heart (1995), to the extent that two secondary characters (the cats), The Baron and Muta, are here principal characters. Otherwise it’s a standalone effort, though the English title might make a bit more sense if Whisper of the Heart had been released first. The Japanese title, Neko no Ongaeshi, translates as "The Gift of the Cats," or more specifically, "the gift that keeps on giving whether you like it or not."
The story begins with Haru (Anne Hathaway) rescuing a cat from getting run over by a truck. The cat turns out to be the son of the King of the Cats (Tim Curry, as a kind of unreformed 1950s hipster), who decides he likes this kid and that she’d make a good daughter-in-law. After failing to persuade her with presents, such as dozens of little gift boxes stuffed with mice, they kidnap her and drag her off to the Kingdom of the Cats, an Alice in Wonderland place where Haru finds herself shrinking to cat proportions herself.
It is then up to The Baron (Cary Elwes), along with Muta (Peter Boyle) and a giant crow (Elliot Gould) to rescue her. At this point the movie very much turns in a cat version of an Errol Flynn swashbuckler, made even sillier by a steady stream of sight gags (made funnier by the fact that they’re all--cats!) that veer off into Coyote & Roadrunner territory. The film’s one significant failing is that, unlike Miyazaki’s carefully realized fantasy worlds, the internal workings of the Kingdom of the Cats quickly lose any logic further than the next joke.
Still, they’re pretty good jokes and, after all, this is director Hiroyuki Morita’s first feature effort. You have to applaud a Studio Ghibli project determined not to take itself seriously in the slightest. And Morita does rein things in sufficiently in the denouement to deliver the requisite object lesson without too much saccharine.
And to give credit where it’s due, Disney has again done an outstanding job producing a dub track every bit the equal of the original, which is frankly always a bit surprising considering Disney’s seemingly grudging indifference to the Ghibli library it spent a hefty sum licensing. Someone there must be determined to do it right or not do it at all. To top it off, they brought Cary Elwes back for the far superior Whisper of the Heart, a truly wonderful movie about books and writing and imagination.
The theme song for The Cat Returns was written and performed by Ayano Tsuji. NPR interviewed her on its Weekend Edition 21 January 2006 program. You can listen to the audio here. The Studio Ghibli production of Whispers of the Heart is based on the manga by Aoi Hiiragi. A magazine like Cricket really should serialize it. It'd be perfect for a pre-teen female audience.
The story begins with Haru (Anne Hathaway) rescuing a cat from getting run over by a truck. The cat turns out to be the son of the King of the Cats (Tim Curry, as a kind of unreformed 1950s hipster), who decides he likes this kid and that she’d make a good daughter-in-law. After failing to persuade her with presents, such as dozens of little gift boxes stuffed with mice, they kidnap her and drag her off to the Kingdom of the Cats, an Alice in Wonderland place where Haru finds herself shrinking to cat proportions herself.
It is then up to The Baron (Cary Elwes), along with Muta (Peter Boyle) and a giant crow (Elliot Gould) to rescue her. At this point the movie very much turns in a cat version of an Errol Flynn swashbuckler, made even sillier by a steady stream of sight gags (made funnier by the fact that they’re all--cats!) that veer off into Coyote & Roadrunner territory. The film’s one significant failing is that, unlike Miyazaki’s carefully realized fantasy worlds, the internal workings of the Kingdom of the Cats quickly lose any logic further than the next joke.
Still, they’re pretty good jokes and, after all, this is director Hiroyuki Morita’s first feature effort. You have to applaud a Studio Ghibli project determined not to take itself seriously in the slightest. And Morita does rein things in sufficiently in the denouement to deliver the requisite object lesson without too much saccharine.
And to give credit where it’s due, Disney has again done an outstanding job producing a dub track every bit the equal of the original, which is frankly always a bit surprising considering Disney’s seemingly grudging indifference to the Ghibli library it spent a hefty sum licensing. Someone there must be determined to do it right or not do it at all. To top it off, they brought Cary Elwes back for the far superior Whisper of the Heart, a truly wonderful movie about books and writing and imagination.
The theme song for The Cat Returns was written and performed by Ayano Tsuji. NPR interviewed her on its Weekend Edition 21 January 2006 program. You can listen to the audio here. The Studio Ghibli production of Whispers of the Heart is based on the manga by Aoi Hiiragi. A magazine like Cricket really should serialize it. It'd be perfect for a pre-teen female audience.
Labels: anime reviews, cats, miyazaki, personal favs, studio ghibli