Review of A Whisker Away

A Whisker Away is one of the recent anime films to come out focused on a troubled teen learning a lesson on life through some paranormal circumstances. In this case, middle schooler Miyo Sasaki is dealing with a troubled family life between her father remarrying following a divorce and her biological mother neglecting her. In addition, she has an obsessive romantic interest in her classmate, Kento Hinode. Wanting to get close to Hinode, Miyo obtains a magical mask from a mysterious mask seller that allows her to turn into a cat in order to spend time with him. However, this acquisition comes with consequences asMiyo find herself slowly turning into a cat due to not wanting to confront the stresses of her human life.

The film’s attempt at expressing its moral comes with its issues involving its storytelling and characters. Miyo’s character is a bit of a double-edged sword where while it’s understandable that she doesn’t know how to properly express her emotions through her rough family life, it makes her interest in Hinode rather uneasy to see in action due to her actions bordering on being stalker-like with Miyo being in the habit of invading his personal space without his permission, not knowing when to take no for an answer when he turns her down, and using her cat transformations as a means to visit him and gain his trust unknowingly. The other angle to the film, Miyo’s family problems, largely plays second fiddle to focusing on Miyo and Hinode’s relationship developments as Miyo is more focused on her crush and not too concerned with her family issues despite this getting some focus during the middle of the film. Hinode’s character is largely pretty one-note and he largely seems to show little romantic interest in Miyo throughout much of the film. But how A Whisker Away chooses to resolve the relationship comes off as too convenient and unconvincing between Miyo’s troubling behavior getting rewarded and Hinode largely having little interest in a relationship before this point.

Far as the paranormal angle to the film goes, it looked like A Whisker Away was taking cues from Studio Ghibli’s The Cat Returns with elements to its story and will admit this has its moments of decent storytelling. The use of masks for humans to turn into cats and vice versa is a solid story element that offers its moments of solid exploration of the character motives for wanting to use the power of said masks, this nicely shown with Kinako, the pet cat of Miyo’s stepmother. The Mask Seller is also a solid villain for the film with his manipulation of the characters tempting them to use his masks for his personal gain and showing his true character by later in the film. Only major gripe I have with this element was that the land of the cats used in the film’s final story arc largely felt like a backdrop between the lack of exploration of the locale and the storytelling it could have offered up going into more detail on other characters who faced a similar predicament that Miyo’s currently undergoing that they since regret.

Overall, A Whisker Away has a good number of issues with its storytelling and characters that hurt it as a coming-of-age film that mainly involve the direction of Miyo’s character developments and the unconvincing romance the film attempts to sell between her and Hinode. The paranormal elements of the film have their moments to shine, though the final story arc in the land of the cats wastes what storytelling potential this could have offered as the setting largely served as a backdrop for concluding the film. In short, this is one of the more underwhelming and flawed coming-of-age films I’ve seen out of this familiar trend of anime films.