Nekojiru-sou

Nekojiro-sou certainly has my recommendation. It's short enough that it's not much of a commitment to watch, and engaging enough that it's hard to lose interest. The story is almost non-narrative, yet with a direction; and there is very minimal dialog to help move the story along. It's like a silent film filled with background music and atmospheric sound. For me though the most interesting part about Nekojiro-sou is it's commentaries on the real world. There are references to taking advantage of animals, over-exhausting natural resources, and hints at how to deal with mental health. All of these are addressed in a surreal, whimsical way--but they are serious issues. I love the encryption and how much you can find if you dig in a little deeper.

On a slightly serious start, I'm changing up my reviews and just speaking my mind rather than being orderly and dividing shows/movies/OVAs into categories. This may be a one-off or may be how I continue my reviews. Thank you. I literally sat there, head in hands, for a good minute or two after this... This... EXPERIENCE ended. I would say I'm at a loss for words, but if this was the case I wouldn't be able to write this review. Like the youtube channel The Cynical Brit, you will mutter three words throughout the show. What. The. Fuck. Seriously, this is messed up! There is a whiff of a plot - a cat-like creature, personified to be like an 8 year old kid, goes through a surreal experience with his older sister, who seems to be sort of brain dead. I mean it that in the most literal sense, not trying to be mean. Now, symbolism. The kids sister obviously has some sort of mental problem, his dad is a dead beat who drinks all day, and the kid himself just eats and is violent to a degree, all the while smiling. This to me suggests a showing of human greed and how far we are willing to go as a race to satisfy this, and now the ending makes a little more sense! No spoilers of course! Ok, to finish off. Seriously, and I mean this in the nicest way possible, and I sympothize because I know people like this, if you have any mental illness 'above' depression, such as bipolar, schizophrenia etc - DO NOT WATCH. Seriously, I was really uncomfortable at some parts and I'm just really sensitive. It's like watching someone who took a combined acid/coke trip, had mediocre and the greatest sex, then that persons dream in animated form. If what I've described sounds good, it's only half an hour of your life, but I think I'd struggle to recommend. OH, another comparison, the wierd shit when youtube began, like shrek is life, shrek is love. It's certainly an experience, but again, don't know whether I'd recommend it. (thanks to NeoMag for the recommendation!)

(This won't be a regular review since this isn't a regular type of anime). I don't know what anyone else got out of this, but I definitely noticed a number of Western stories/themes that it drew from, A few being Hansel and Gretel, Noah and the Flood, God as the "Great Watch Maker", and a few other things. Did anyone else pick up on this? As for actual reviewing goes... the story is not so important here. It simply seems to be an exercise in artistic, albeit avant guard, expression. Many different mediums are explored by which to express existentialistic thoughts/doubts, culminating in the highly prevalent symbolism of the atomic bomb found in Japanese art and its resulting destruction.

I absolutely love Cat Soup. It's awkward, it's creepy, it's adorable and thought provoking. It starts out pretty cute and then gets more disturbing as it goes on but it's fun and quirky. Cat Soup really started me on my quest for really interesting short animated films and I have to say Cat Soup is still number one in that group for me. A must see for anyone who enjoys a little cannibalism.

“I don’t think I had a dream as a child. I just wanted to live a slow life.” - Masaaki Yuasa There’s something intoxicating about the way Masaaki Yuasa bends reality. I mean, Cat Soup—the title alone drips with a strange, offbeat irony, begging you to ponder the possibility of boiling a cat into soup. It comes off as grotesque, but what if it wasn’t? What if the story is an eccentric recipe uniting the absurd and the tragic? A chaotic stew of life’s catastrophes bubbling below the clumsy gaze of cosmic forces; oh, and boiling cats too! In Cat Soup, Yuasa’s signature blend of warped imagery and narrative ambiguity is in evidence. His worlds are more like lucid dreams than traditional narratives. The haunting short film lures you in with its simplicity, a story about a brother cat named Nyāta trying to recover his sister’s lost soul after abruptly dying. Nyāta quickly finds himself on a surreal journey that’s both beautiful and unsettling. Watching it is like getting transported through a kaleidoscope, where each fragment shifts with your emotions, changing the meaning and impact of every scene. At its core, Cat Soup is a film that doesn’t spill its moral guts right away. It lets you decide whether it’s a quiet tragedy or a muted celebration of life. Nyāta’s quest to reclaim his sister’s soul could easily be seen as a bleak reflection on mortality and the fickleness of fate. But then again, its playful humor and moments of stunning visual bliss transform it into something else entirely– perhaps a reminder of the arbitrary joys of existence. One of the film’s strengths is how it alternates between crushingly sad and oddly hopeful, utilizing the viewer's emotional state to grant its perspective. With no neat lines to separate the black from the white, a gray area clearly exists. For instance, when Nyāta loses his sister to death early in the film and retrieves only half of her soul she becomes a shell, a husk drifting through their bizarre world without any awareness. With a pessimistic lens, this could be seen as a brutal reminder that once lost, innocence can never truly be restored. But then there’s Nyāta, persistently dragging his sister along with a determination that can only be described as heroic. That persistence in the face of futility is heartwarming, a preface that love and loyalty can carry you through even when your own world is ridden with distortion. Even as the siblings encounter the most absurd of beings and dangers—being swallowed by a pig, being prepped for stew or drowning in an endless ocean, there's still an uncanny beauty and humor in how these events are presented. Like a children’s sketchbook come to life, Yuasa’s fluid animation style teeters between innocence and horror. Like when Nyāta cuts a pig in half and Yuasa presents the scene as a cross-section of meat and organs, the effect is riddled with a toon-like style. Should I gasp? Should I giggle? It’s this kind of tonal snap that makes Cat Soup feel like such a delicacy: One small mistake and you’ll overpower the stew. But what really defines Cat Soup is its mastery of controlling your emotional response through its pacing, sound and visuals. Yuasa and Satō are experts at creating a sense of unease, where even moments of calm feel riddled with a potential for mayhem. Like the scene where Nyāta and his sister encounter a god-like figure who turns a knob, flooding the entire world. At first you’re granted a beautiful, tranquil visual where the waves shadow over everything; an orange aurora of water icing the reset button on the universe. Yet, there’s a void rooted in it too. An understanding that this god doesn’t care what or who gets washed away. It’s inevitable and uncontrollable, a dainty decision off a whim. These beings, powerful and indifferent, use the universe as their own personal sandbox. With a detached expression, they turn the knob that causes the flood, and just as effortlessly, they turn it off, restoring everything as if nothing happened. There’s no malice, no kindness in their actions; just children playing with building blocks, stacking them up and stomping them down. This moral ambiguity is unsettling, making it impossible to see these beings as saviors or villains– but that’s the point. In Cat Soup, higher powers are not bound by human (cat) concepts of right and wrong. They simply exist. They create, destroy and reshape the world according to a logic that they know nothing about. It’s terrifying, and there’s no comfort in the idea that the universe is ruled by beings who might erase your existence without even noticing. But it can be freeing. If the universe is governed by such chaos, then why not find your own meaning? This sense of unpredictability extends to the very world that our main characters trek through. The landscapes feel sentient, colors bleeding into each other, shapes like a funhouse mirror, like the world is alive. It’s a place where everything is on the verge of transformation. It’s as if the environment itself is reacting to the heroine's presence. In one moment, they are sidewinding through the desert, the next, the sand is personified; in another, a circus tent blooms like a spring flower, swallowing them into a realm of disorienting oddities. Yuasa’s depiction of nature isn’t static; it’s a living, breathing figure, capable of beating the drum of its heart without warning. The animation style gives life to this world as well. Loose and liquidy, bending and distorting. A reminder that nothing is fixed, not even the rubble beneath the characters’ feet. Everything can be undone and remade in an instant, much like Nyāta’s final act of turning a knob and seemingly erasing the entire universe. Is it Nyāta smashing the reset button? Or maybe an act of hopelessness? A playful gesture even; and when that screen goes black and the film ends, you are left with an unnerving hollow ache, like turning the lights off when you’re home alone. But back to that bowl of soup! Like the broth, its meaning is hard to pin down; it ebbs and flows depending on how you engage with it. Whether you see it as a reminder of life’s fragility or a testament to resilience, it is a reflection of the personal journey the film takes you on, shifting with your own perspective as you follow a red string through a bizarre world.

Cat Soup, or Nekojiru-sou, is a short film/movie about a cat named Nyatto who goes on a journey to save his sister's soul. The movie is a silent film, or at least it doesn't have any talking, and uses beautiful and abstract art to tell its story. I haven't read any of the comics for Nekojiru, so I'll try to sum up the story in my own words from how I interpretted the film; A young cat, Nyatto, lives with his parents and sister. His sister is very ill, and ends up dying one day when the doctor visits their home. Nyatto follows the one who takes her soul away, and steals part of her soul back so that she can live again, but some of her soul is still missing. Nyatto takes his sister on a quest to retrieve the rest of her soul, going through many dangerous obstacles, until he finds a flower that brings her fully back to life. The siblings go home and live their normal life again, but by bringing his sister back to life, Nyatto damages the world, and his family vanishes, along with everyone else. Eventually, the world disappears. The end credits for the movie roll, and it shows a video the family all together at the beach, but keeps rewinding the tape. Music box music plays in the end. The art for this movie is very gorgeous, especially when the siblings are on the frozen wave. This movie is very bizarre, but I love anime that are strange or confusing, so this is honestly right up my alley. When I see people complaining about a show or story because it's complex or hard to understand, I get a tad bit annoyed. Obviously there's nothing wrong with liking stories that are easy to understand, but it's good to try to figure things out for yourself, or to even give something your OWN meaning. Something that makes me sad when watching this movie is thinking about the author's life. Struggling with depression, she wrote her stories as a way to express herself. May 10, 1998, she commited suicide, leaving a note that included: "Forget I even lived". The movie Cat Soup came out a few years after she died, and seeing Nyatto's world dissappearing after everything he went through almost feels like the world had vanished because the author was gone, her world vanished. After watching this film, I always find myself drawing Nyatto on papers and in my notebooks. The cats are adorable and so fun to draw! If you're looking for something good to watch but only have a bit of time, then this is a great film for that. Thanks for reading! :)

I don’t even know how I would rate this movie. The way the themes of nihilism and society being evil are conveyed are so unique. I think the movie perfectly described how a child would look at society, war, god, and death. Nihilistic and carefree. Nyatta always has a smile on his face no matter what happens. Or he could be dreaming all of this since he died in the beginning. I’m not sure what to give this on a scale of 1-10 because it's more about the message than the movie itself. Not to say the movie was bad it’s really fun and I enjoyed it.

I finished it with zero understanding of what's going on... If you're simple-minded like me, I suggest you go and watch other people's commentary on this instead. The message behind Nekojiru is great, revealing cruelty and emotional abuse; there are many ways to interpret the story, this is just one angle to look at it. Because there are no words, it can be very hard to figure out the intention behind each scene if you miss out on the details. For example, the orange flower on the cover is what Nyatto need to get back the other half of his sister's soul. I was not aware of this at all until I watched a commentary. Pay attention to the speech bubble if you're going to watch this.

SPOILER-FREE REVIEW Nekojiru-sou, otherwise known as Cat Soup, is a rather dark and honestly, interesting OVA. It's really magnificent in terms of art, and the story is frankly quite original too. Everything seemed to blend into itself very well. Story : This anime is about a young cat by the name of Nyako. His sister falls ill, leading them on a strangely dark and interesting adventure. If I'm honest, it really was very original. The only part I didn't like was the very end. It was quite an unexpected ending, and even though the chances of a sequel are quite small, the will for one is overpowering. 8/10 Art : The art is amazing, gorgeous, beautiful, definitely a reason to re-watch this anime. It goes very well with the vibe the creators wanted to send, matching the rather dark theme. I don't see a reason not to give the art a 9/10. Sound : The music matched the anime very well. It's very simple, and manages not to sound to dark and brooding, or upbeat and happy. Music gets a 7/10. Characters : In the short amount of time we had, we see that Nyako and his sister are very close. The way the creators established their obvious love for each other in only half an hour was definitely notable. 8/10 Enjoyment : This anime is enjoyable, but definitely not one of the most enjoyable anime ever watched. You may have to pause at times to think about things, but really, I wouldn't re-watch this anime unless for the art. Overall, this was a very original and enjoyable anime, and I can only hope that artsy anime will become more popular in the future.

This is weird, when is saw this anime, day before yesterday, I clicked on some parts of the anime about few seconds and I started to cring. After that I felt bad at the next day, for good I found other things to do and forget about it. But today I decided to watch it in its entirety and nothing made me to cry or feel bad and strange I didn't understood most of situacions. The art reminds me of an old sovied animation, in general the animations between 50s to 90s, which I watched when I was kid, because my parents and grandparents are born and lived in communist times. Maybe this is the reason I cried. Overall I recommend to watch this animation as art, not as typical anime.

This is an incredible piece of animation, some of the best I have seen. It is unfortunate that the best quality i could find this in is so low. However, having read some of the source material and watched the other anime Nekojiru Gekijou, I have to say this does not fit the source material very well. It is kind of an surreal take on it, I guess? I enjoyed Nekojiru Gekijou much more, depicting the manga and keeping its vibe very well. I would say if you are a fan of really good, fluid animation or surrealist art, you should definitely watch this. However, if you are here to see Nyakko and Nyatta be mean and bully some farm animals, this is not the right place.