Nekojiru-sou (Cat Soup): Review (2001, OVA, 1 Episode)
Cat Soup is a
2001 multi award-winning OVA by
J.C.Staff and is directed by
Tatsuo Sato and with a run-time of
34 minutes it’s pretty much one of the most psychedelic, strange and hallucinatory things that I’ve seen in the medium and I thoroughly enjoyed its company.
Cat Soup revolves around a family of cats, in particular the main character, a kitten named
Nyatta and his older sister,
Nyako. The film starts off with
Nyako passing away, and as her soul is being taken, her brother manages to retrieve half of it and returns it to her and she is resurrected, although brain-dead. The rest of the short as far as I’m aware is all about
Nyatta going on a quest to retrieve the other half and bring his sister back to the way she was. What follows can only be explained as dreamlike in every sense of the word. Each scene is strung together by a sequence of bizarre events married with camera angles that distort the scenery and brings everything to life. The whole OVA reminded me a lot of one that I previously watched,
Neo Tokyo or the
Labyrinth labyrinthos short in particular. Both are dreamlike, surreal and engrossing as you fight to absorb it all in order to fully understand the meaning behind everything. But like many of the best works out there, maybe the truth is that there is no one true meaning behind the events that occur and they take place simply because they look interesting? Even so I truly do believe that even if that was the case, something has to be going on within the minds of the creators when conjuring up such vivid imagery.
Masaaki Yuasa of
Tatami Galaxy,
Ping Pong and
Mind Game fame is known for displaying a unique pallet of animation, much of which takes inspiration from western animation and
Cat Soup especially resembles such European avant-garde films in both style and storytelling, meaning that it’s very experimental and abstract. I have to admit that this style of film-making is something that I both respect and admire so it was clear from the start that this was going to appeal to me, but even so I went in cold and unaware of what
Cat Soup had in store for me, so it’s of course a delightful surprise that this short but sweet OVA delivered exactly that. Like many experimental films, audio plays an important role here, but as you can imagine that doesn’t mean that there’s a lot of it but that what is there is utilized appropriately. Instead of treating each element as a commodity, color, screen estate and sound are all used accordingly and not abundantly. If the goal is to foster a more intimate and active relationship with the viewer then
Cat Soup succeeds here with flying colors. Not only are you pulled into the world but you actively want to know more about it and the intricacies.
Cat Soup is constantly interesting to watch and full of imagery that keeps you interested and more importantly engaged which is the main thing here, because if a 34 minute OVA with basically no dialogue fails to capture your attention and keep the audience interested then it obviously has failed to do its job and goes to show the power of art and images.
As mentioned previously, audio is important here, and a vast majority of it is ambient sounds. The sounds of waves crashing against each other is both loud and powerful, the sounds of the winds brushing the trees is calm and soothing, the sounds of cicada singing, lots of sounds are utilized in order to create atmosphere. The music itself is what I’d call appropriate, as in its nothing remarkable but used well in order to supplement each scene. The music is still really nice and is composed by
Hiroshi Ogasawara. I’m not going to be hunting out the soundtrack for this one but it’s still great to listen to and they did a great job in regards to the audio department here.
The animation here is without a doubt the main attraction, and it delivers on all accounts. The visuals are creative and eye-catching and a lot of perspective shifts from the viewers and the characters perspective are utilized to great effect in order to give the animation a certain flow. From exaggerated motion to all sorts of shots the frame is always interesting and eventful. Both psychedelic and hallucinatory every object that looks familiar acts and is manipulated in unfamiliar ways which definitely adds a sense of wonder to everything. “I wonder what’s going to happen next!” Hatching and various other animation techniques are used in order to give facial expressions an extra depth and layer. Every scene looks different and interesting and keeps you engaged throughout. Now although the cats look cute,
Cat Soup contains imagery that’s very vivid to say the least. A woman is chopped up into pieces and put back together again by a God like character; the cat opens up a pig like a sack and removes a piece of its meat (loin) before cooking it in front of the anthropomorphic pig as it watches curiously before it eats a bit of itself happily. One scene in particular give me Hansel and Gretel vibes as a man lures the two cats into his house which is filled with all sorts of grotesque portraits of people being dissected hanging, feeds them and then lures them into a boiling stew (a literal Cat Soup) only to return in bondage gear, huge shears in hand ready to cut their heads off only to trip and fall into the stew himself as the kittens slowly but casually climb out and use said shears to cut the man up himself before leaving in a scene that reminds me of
Courage the Cowardly Dog in visuals and style but crazy in content just as the rest of
Cat Soup and although there’s many other crazy scenes I could talk about, it’s hard not to at least acknowledge the scene that shows the world in reverse as it depicts all sorts of scenes like people being executed…reversed…
yeah it’s a strange one all right.
Really,
Cat Soup is bizarre, strange and interesting to watch. The director himself has often stated that a lot of what transpires in
Cat Soup is just purely random with no meaning whatsoever, but what I love about these types of works is how open they are to interpretation. Everyone has something to say about
Cat Soup and a lot of theories can be conjured up for this film. In any case I implore you to come up with your own interpretation of this peculiar and very strange OVA of a cute cat venturing out into a bizarre world in order to retrieve the soul of his sister. Adorned in great, stylish and eye-catching visuals and at 34 minutes you’ll see some of the most vivid and interesting imagery in the medium, with many of it looking as if it arrived from a different part of the world all together. Some people see films and shows that are vague as pointless but I think that the joy comes from the journey that the viewer has and the meanings that you gather from your viewing is far from pointless.
Overall:
8/10
Story: 7
Animation: 9
Sound: 7
Character: 6
Enjoyment: 9
Recommended if you liked:
Mind Game,
Neo Tokyo,
Robot Carnival,
Genius Party,
The Diary of Tortov Roddle.
And if you like this, watch the above.
