tek's rating: ¼

She and Her Cat / Their Standing Points (4:43)
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Written and directed by Makoto Shinkai. This short film was originally released in 1999, but I first saw it in 2018. It was adapted into a four-episode series in 2016, which I haven't seen (but would like to). Well... the film is in black & white, and the entire thing is narrated by a cat, who talks about his life with the woman who adopted him. It kind of put me in mind of Downward Dog, except the narration here is very poetic. I guess it also reminded me of Gothball. (I would not be at all surprised to learn that either, or both, of those webseries were to some degree inspired by this film, though it's just as likely that the people who made them had never seen this.) And even though I only saw the English dub, I thought it had a very Japanese sensibility. There's really not much else I could possibly say, because nothing much really happens. But it's definitely charming.

Edit: in 2023 I watched it again, this time in Japanese with English subtitles, as a bonus feature on GKIDS' Blu-ray of 5 Centimeters per Second.


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