Trailer
Plot summary
A young girl rescues a mysterious cat from traffic and soon finds herself the unwelcome recipient of gifts and favors from the King of the Cats, who also wants her to marry his son, Prince Lune. With the assistance of a fat, grouchy real cat and a an elegant cat statuette come to life (both characters featured in Studio Ghibli's earlier anime "Whisper of the Heart"), the girl visits the Cat Kingdom and narrowly escapes again.
Cast
Did you know?!Facts and trivia about The Cat Returns (2002)
Can contain spoilers, watch the movie first.
- Studio Ghibli's The Cat Returns began in 1999 as "The Cat Project", a 20-minute cat short commissioned by a Japanese theme park, with Hayao Miyazaki wanting the Baron, Muta and a mysterious antique shop in it, and Aoi Hiiragi hired to write the manga equivalent.
- The theme park canceled the project, and Hayao Miyazaki then reused the "Cat Project" work as a testing ground for future Studio Ghibli directors, with the short now running 45 minutes.
- Hiroyuki Morita, an animator on My Neighbors the Yamadas, spent nine months turning Aoi Hiiragi's Baron story into 525 pages of storyboards, and Miyazaki and Toshio Suzuki then decided to make the feature entirely from his storyboard.
- It became the second theatrical Studio Ghibli feature to be directed by someone other than Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata.
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