She and Her Cat ~ Their Standing Points

Ugh. I’ve still been busy for college studies, but I’m starting to see the light at the end of the long tunnel. Alas, I shall not arrive there for a while (after maybe 4-5 days). For now, here’s another very good work of Shinkai Makoto: She and Her Cat ~ Their Standing Points.

She and Her Cat is a bittersweet short anime about a woman, her cat, their lives, and their lives together. Told from through the cat’s point of view, we can see that the cat is very fond of the woman. Their days together pass by contentedly in a small apartment. Through the cat’s eyes, we see the woman’s story of love and heartache. The whole short is done in black and white, giving it that film noir effect just like the previous short that I just recently talked about, Tooi Sekai ~ Other Worlds. The animation is well done, and the camera angles are panned over scenes frequently giving us a glimpse and sight into the life of the cat and the woman. Details are very nicely done, such as the raindrops and the objects scattered around the apartment. Music is used sparingly; there is almost no background music, yet this achieves a melancholy atmosphere with the highly contrasted dialogue.

As for the characters, there are three: the woman, the cat named Chobi, and the female cat named Mimi. Chobi is a very nice charismatic narrator, in fact I think he’s one of the best narrators I’ve seen in anime so far. Mimi is a young child who is in love with Chobi and wants to marry him, but Chobi does not see her as a fully-matured woman and says that it’s a false promise and prefers the woman. The woman we see reacts and reflects on what’s happening around her just as typical of human nature, and note that Chobi is so endeared with the woman that he doesn’t seem to care for anything around him.

She and Her Cat is a very nice, sweet animation short with several poignant themes: innocence, love, heartache. This is Shinkai Makoto’s first well-known work that propelled him to fame and onto his next work, Voices of a Distant Star.

Tooi Sekai ~ Other Worlds

Hello, as I was far too busy today, I haven’t been able to complete a decent blog post. So, I decided to show off a anime short that I think you will like (especially if you are a fan of Shinaki Makoto!). The short is Tooi Sekai ~ Other Worlds, created in 1992 by Shinkai Makoto.

You can intrepret it however you like; it’s definitely an unique short. My interpretation is that Tooi Sekai ~ Other Worlds shows the brief relationship of a couple, and this short leaves us to speculate about the complexity of human relationships. Also, film noir (at last, one thing I learned from college to apply to anime!) is used here, with the short in black and white. There is no dialogue and the subtle atmosphere was greatly accomplished by the use of film noir. Also, the sound is superb, invoking emotions that of romanticism, melancholy, and a sense of a distant world. The only aspects lacking are the characters; we get a glimpse of the characters and they are not fleshed out, rather we are left to wonder what will become of them. Despite this, I love this short so much as there’s a feeling of romance to it and great music as well.

Shinaki Makoto’s talents are clearly being developed at the time of this short’s making, and now he has come this far with his famous works, Voices of a Distant Star, The Place Promised in Our Early Days, and most notably, 5 Centimeters Per Second.