The Cat Returns, meanwhile, is all fluff, but it’s cute and enjoyable fluff at the very least.Īnd part of what makes The Cat Returns so, pardon the intentional pun, “fluffy”, is that it is the Studio’s first and perhaps only purely commercial endeavor.
But those films managed to contain within them a richer subtext than its conventional narrative structures would lead on. Sure, Ghibli has produced plenty of straightfoward adventure stories, from the perfect Castle in the Sky to the magical Spirited Away. It’s a breezy, quick, light-as-a-feather fantasy adventure that coasts along its brief 75 minute running time in as inoffensive a manner as possible.īut that’s really all there is to it. That doesn’t make the film outright bad, mind you. It is also, for my money, the weakest film to come out of Studio Ghibli that I’ve seen (though keep in mind that I haven’t seen the much-reviled Tales From Earthsea yet). Hiroyuki Morita’s The Cat Returns is the second film from Studio Ghibli to not be directed by company co-founders Hayao Miyazaki and Isao Takahata.
