This is lighter fare that my wife noticed while we were browsing through Netflix. One would have expected this to be another manga adaptation but in this instance, the reverse is true. It’s an original story written for animation and then later adapted as a manga. The core idea is cutesy yet sound enough: a teenage girl feels depressed by her familial situation and prefers to escape by turning into a cat. Unfortunately this is also inextricably tied to her infatuation for a boy in her class and this is just juvenile. This is a film that was made for the young adult market and it’s fine in that regard, but it’s not for us.

Teenager Miyo Sasaki is gregarious at school, actively flirting and harassing her crush Kento Hinode despite his obvious discomfort. At home she is polite to her stepmother Kaoru but hides her anguish about her mother leaving and her father remarrying. One night she meets a mysterious mask seller who offers her a cat mask. Wearing it transforms her into a cat and so she takes to spending evenings at Hinode’s house in cat form. The boy names her Tarō and confides in her about his own troubles about wanting to be a potter like his grandmother but lacking the confidence to tell that to his mother. Miyo ignores the bullying she receives at school for being so forward with Hinode but fiercely defends him when the other boys insult him. Then she writes a love letter to Hinode that is read by the other students in class and an embarrassed Hinode rejects her. Devastated, Miyo resolves to become a cat forever. The mask seller who is a cat with magical powers, gleefully accepts, asking for her human face in exchange.

It doesn’t take much media literacy to foresee that giving up your humanity is a bad idea and so the story proceeds along expected lines. The only deviation is that the mask seller is actively malevolent rather being the more usual trickster archetype. Stealing the lifespan of children is seriously evil and it’s disappointing that he doesn’t face much more severe consequences for it. Visiting the secret town of cats is the highlight of the film, suggesting that they have a parallel magical society of their own. The visuals are pretty cool but then they’re a step down from what Studio Ghibli regularly puts out so what’s the point of making do with second best? The same goes for its overall quality: good enough to be crowd-pleasing but nothing outstanding. One particular disappointment is that it’s so determinedly targets only the youth demographic. We know nothing at all about why Miyo’s parents separated. When her mother tries to justify herself and says that it’s adult business that children can’t understand, Miyo angrily responds that she shouldn’t make it her problem then. Fair, but it also shuts out all adults from the story.

From a Western perspective, Miyo’s physical harassment and stalking of Hinode would be problematic. Winning his affections as a cat and having that carry over into a real relationship is manipulative. If the genders were reversed, this would surely be seen as being incredibly creepy. It may appeal to adolescents that two 14-year-olds can deem each other soulmates and give Miyo a reason to stay human, but any adult would look side-eyed at this childishness. As we’ve seen in other animated films, it’s possible to both cater to teenage angst and a romanticized view of puppy love without coming across as being stupid to adults. Unfortunately we are adults so this film is definitely a miss for us.