Review of A Whisker Away
This section of the review will be SPOILER-FREE A Whisker Away is an interesting film to say the least. I think instead of focusing on being a Romance movie with a Super Natural twist, it should have strayed away from the Romance genre more to focus solely on the quality of development of our main characters. If you want to watch a family friendly Disney-like high school Romance with a super natural twist then this is for you. Don’t expect a mature tone and for the development and themes to be fully fleshed out. This section of the review will contain SPOILERSStory - 5
I am not going to give a synopsis because I feel the MAL summary does a good job of explaining the plot. From the trailer, it seems like it was going to be a typical high school Romance movie with the twist that the main protagonist can become a cat so that she can get closer to her love interest. However, this is actually quite expanded upon in the latter half of the movie. The themes that I get from this movie are 1. Appreciate the people and relationships around you 2. Don’t try and run away from your problems
Characters - 3
This has to be the worst part about this movie for me. The main characters struggles, backstories, and personalities are showcased well, but their development seemed lackluster. I’m not really going to focus on the other characters except our main two, because while some might say they are important in developing the story, they are there just to support our main leads.
Also, the main antagonist is very lackluster and seems like he came straight out of a Disney movie.
Miyo is an energetic girl who has a severely one-sided crush on Hinode, the male lead. The first parts of the movie make it seem like she almost has mental issues. I don’t know if that was the intention or not, but I would say she is delusional because of her depression of her parents getting separated and Hinode is her only salvation. She is delusional and so over the top that it makes her look crazy. When Hinode talks to her everyone becomes scarecrows. I mean she literally jumped off a 2 story bridge at her school, (she braced herself with trees) just to tell off two guys that were making fun of Hinode. Who in their right mind would do that? I understand liking someone a lot but why would you put yourself at such a high risk just to tell some people off? At least she stops doing this so much, but that’s because for the rest of the story she is a cat. She changes because she realizes being a cat is actually shitty and she can’t interact with the people in her life anymore (who would’ve thought). At least she learns her lesson and sees that the people in her life were just trying to support her, and that she won’t ignore everything as just scarecrows in the background.
Hinode is the ‘seems like a serious guy but actually has his own struggles too’. He has the burden of being the future money maker of the household, since his father died. His mother wants him to use his smarts to get into college and get a stable job, but he wants to do pottery like his grandfather (he is not very good at it btw). After realizing that the cat is actually Miyo, he gets sad that he was an asshole to her because she was actually there for him the whole time. He claims he puts up this front and constantly rejects Miyo because he didn’t want her to see him as a nobody. Frankly this seems so stupid to me. I would say the reason that he separates himself from her is because she yells “Hinode Sunrise Attack!” every morning and bumps into him with her ass for the whole school to see. That in itself is a pretty good reason to avoid connecting with said person. He then changes and says he loves her. It’s like he completely forgot that even thought she was being all happy happy and looking after him, it was only because she was crazy for him.
Art - 7
Nothing too bad to say about the art. It’s not anything too spectacular, but it was solid.
Sound - 6
I actually quite liked the VA job in this film. I particularly like the voice actress for Miyo, and I think it captured her as a crazy maiden in love very well.
As for the OST, it wasn’t bad, but I felt it did it’s job at setting the tone well and being background music
Overall: 5
My problems for this movie would be the light-hearted tone. If the movie didn’t rely so much on Romance to develop our characters and gave it a more dark/ mature tone I think I would’ve liked it better. Could’ve made the villain more imposing, gave more depth to the characters, and not make it seem like Miyo is crazy for laughs. I probably went into the film with too much expectation, but it’s okay. But for what it was trying to accomplish, it wasn’t too bad, but it wasn’t great either.