She and Her Cat: Their Standing Points

Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko

Genre: Drama

Format: 1 OVA

Allegiance: Shinkai Makoto

Director: Shinkai Makoto

Vintage: 1999

Intelligence Agency Report by: Drake

One fine spring day, She met Chobi the cat, and She adopted Chobi as her own. Chobi quickly came to love 'She' as his mother, and as a lover with a kind and beautiful appearance. As time passes, Chobi and 'She' create a strong bond with each other, and begin to see each other as a source of refuge from the rest of the world.

Field Agent Report by: Drake

Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual
Audio

7.75
9.00
8.50
5.50
7.00

Overall

8.00

(not an average)

From the popularly acclaimed producer of Voices of a Distant Star comes an anime, She and her Cat. Upon first hearing of this anime, I learned it was even shorter then Comedy (which spanned about ten minutes in full length). Yes, ladies and gentlemen, there is something shorter than ten minutes. She and Her Cat comes in at a whopping four minutes and fifty seconds.

So how is it possible for an anime to be good despite its length being so short? The answer is simple: the four minutes was strategically set up into five sections. In each segment the Cat, Chobi, discusses different aspect of life with his new master, only known as She in this anime. It begins to become evident what type of life style Chobi and his master lived. In one touching scene, She has become very depressed and Chobi comes to comfort her.

Sadly, many viewers may be turned off by the black and white artwork. I myself thought the visuals related well to the OVA. It's just a pity the animation didn't use motion as a big factor; instead the anime opted for a panning shot through. The characters had an interesting and rarely seen movement of just moving from one position to the next unlike many anime where the characters have realistic motion. In an interesting and unusual stylistic technique, the frames jump from one position to the next, unlike the more realistic and fluid movement in most modern anime. The audio component consisted of a piano piece, the cat's dialogue and a few sound effects; all other dialogue was written on the screen.

Despite the short running time, I came to enjoy this anime quite a bit. The characters really made a huge impression on me. I must admit I didn't think anything shorter than ten minutes could ever be pulled off successfully, but She and Her Cat proved otherwise.

Field Agent Report by: Phate

Plot
Characters
Impact
Visual
Audio

7.00
8.00
8.25
8.00
8.50

Overall

8.25

(not an average)

She and Her Cat is the first anime that acclaimed producer/director Shinkai Makoto created, and it won him a few awards along with getting him the funds he needed to make the 25-minute short Voices of a Distant Star. Both are on about the same level of quality, though I tend to prefer the former over the latter.

She and Her Cat is a sweet, slice-of-life story of a young woman and her pet cat. While at first this may not sound all too interesting, the real reason to see this anime is the beauty in the narration combined with the use of pans and stills, and warming piano pieces. Why? This all works to heavily complement the way the substance of the anime is given and, unlike Voices of a Distant Star, the amount of time it's limited to doesn't take largely from the overall quality of the OVA; it actually helps it by emphasizing the simplicity of the anime.

The drawbacks of this anime are few, the most notable one being that when it's over, it feels a bit incomplete. However, while some are going to want it to be longer than it is, I think this would have been the wrong approach to take. True, if it were longer, then perhaps Shinkai-san would have been able to explore deeper into the two characters of She and Her Cat, but then the simplicity of the anime would have been at stake.

While She and Her Cat isn't going to get far with its just-above-average characters, it's the magic of how they are used through Shinkai Makoto's direction and its simplicity that allows the viewer to not ask for the deeper heart of it, but rather search for it themselves. Trust me, it's there.