Review : A Whisker Away

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"She was always smiling and laughing around me. She did it for me." - Kento Hinode

Story : (2.5/5)
Personally, I liked the Japanese name of this anime more, 泣きたい私は猫をかぶる, which means "Wanting to cry, I pretend to be a cat", it basically summarize the whole movie into 9 words. Back to topic, a girl nicknamed Muge whose family underwent divorce is currently living with her remarried father, however she felt that she shouldn't "be there" in the new family. The story started off with the summer festival, Muge's mother wants Muge to live with her, but Muge doesn't really wanted to go back to her side as she was the one who abandoned her when she's still in grade school. Due to the family issues, she thus very much hated her life and hoped that the world ends everyday.


During that festival, she met a mysterious mask seller who gave her a cat mask which grants the wearer the ability to transform into a cat. When she first transformed into a cat, she encountered a boy named Hinode, who is a classmate of hers and he shared his miseries with the cat, Muge as the cat after hearing his problems approached to kiss him at the cheek. From that point onward, Muge started to cheer him up in her human form and as she get to know more about Hinode in the cat form, she started fell for him. (Puppy love yay! Or should I say Kitty?)

Characters : (2.5/5)

The protagonist, Miyo Sasaki hides her true feelings by putting up a mask upfront whenever she felt depressed. She pretends to be brave, cheerful, not bothered by what other people called her. She teases and flirts with Hinode at school everyday with her style of approach (Hinode Sunrise ATTACK), despite of Hinode's cold attitude and him ignoring her, making everyone nickname her Miss Ultra Gaga & Enigmatic (aka Muge) due to her expressiveness. After school, Muge turns into the cat, Taro, named by Hinode after his dead dog. She also struggles in her relationship with her stepmother making her putting up an act of everything is fine to her stepmother, therefore wanting to be with Hinode and leaves the family she can't place herself in.

Kento Hinode, a junior high student who likes the art of pottery but with no exceptional talent in it (finally one main character is not highly talented at what he passionate about, its not bad, just overused in anime), but his mother wanted him to study high school as his family will depend on him in the future. He's smart, yet humble and hardworking in his studies, also loyal and attached to his friends, pets and even stray animals, as described by Muge. He struggles to stand up for what he wanted to do and secretly admires Muge of how she can be somewhat loud on her opinions, slowly growing an interest in her due to Muge's affections on him.

Their relationship steadily grows when Muge defends Hinode's honor and hurts herself when doing so. When Muge learns Hinode's family can no longer support their pottery shop due to financial reasons, she decides to cheer him up by giving him a love letter (and also due to him opening up to her), but the letter was snatched and both of them were humiliated resulting in Hinode rejecting Muge, she thus made up her mind that she wanted to turn to a cat permanently by giving her human face to the mask seller because Hinode likes the cat version of her more plus to hide from her family issues. Upon knowing Muge is missing, Hinode and Muge's best friend, Yoriko started to search on her, Muge who oversaw the event grows to know that there's actually a lot of people who cared for her, thus aimed to claim back her human face.

Music : (5/5)

I won't find out this anime if YouTube didn't recommend me Usotsuki, the ED of this movie, a splendid song but paired with this average story just shy the song from the public eyes. Hana ni Bourei & Night Tour are also pretty good for my taste of music. These songs increased the overall rating of this anime by so much.

There were no OSTs I can find in YouTube, also I don't recall any of it with strong heartfelt melody, but those 3 songs is already very good so I can ignore this. (Update: Usotsuki & Hana ni Bourei is SERIOUSLY GOOD, I find myself going back to these songs over again)

Art/Animation : (2.5/5)
The art is not my taste, character art to be exact, but the cats were well designed, especially Taro's white body and blue eyes combo. The scenery art is good, particularly loved the sacred tree, reminded me of the world tree in SAO which is based of the norse mythology of Yggdrasil, quite average for anime movie standards though. (I've found out later the scenes were based on real life scenes)

Camera movement, very interesting, quite new for me (in anime). The camera moves to give the audience a grasp of the space instead of plain still shots which is mostly if not often used in anime. That's Netflix original for ya. Animation is anime movie standard, this means most of the living creatures are always animated, emitted a more natural feel.

Conclusion : (8.6/Above Average)

Cats. Cat lovers, need I say more?

This movie is about realizing more people care about you than you thought. Also the fact of words are knives, you don't know what other's true emotions are. Overall, okay watch, recommended for movie nights!

Watch it here : https://gogoanime.so/category/nakitai-watashi-wa-neko-wo-kaburu