A Whisker Away Review (6/27/2020)

As a child, I spent a lot of time daydreaming. There was something missing in my day to day life - a sense of adventure, a sense of self-confidence, perhaps even a name to put to the emptiness caused by gender dysphoria. A common focus of my daydreaming was transformation; specifically as a means of escape. I didn't like the person I was and the life I was leading, and I was too young to be able to put all of this into words, so I simply escaped into the world of transformation and fantasy. This year, Netflix took me back to that time with A Whisker Away - a film whose themes hit directly into my heart, even if it also made me uncomfortable with its unwillingness to address its more toxic elements.

A Whisker Away is the latest in a growing number of anime series and films on Netflix involving anthropomorphic animals. In it, a young girl - nicknamed "Muge" by her classmates - with a troubled home life comes across a mysterious cat spirit who sells her a mask that turns her into a cat at will. With it, she begins to visit her crush, a quiet, studious boy named Hinode. Hinode is unaware of her true identity, but develops a fierce bond with her as a cat - one that does not translate to her human form, whom finds to be obnoxious and overbearing in her advances on him.

This central relationship is the film's biggest flaw. Put quite simply, it is an incredibly toxic relationship, with Muge essentially acitng as Hinode's stalker. He never shows any interest in her throughout the first half of the film, and even comes off as disdainful and annoyed at her presence. Yet she essentially spies on him in her cat form and uses that to learn more about him to get closer to him in an extremely one-sided infatuation.

While Muge exhibits very inappropriate behavior towards her crush, she is not a bad person. Her infatuation extends from a longing to escape from her complicated and messy family life, to the one person who showed her love - even if it was in her cat form. In essence, she longs for an escape from the world she perceives as being harsh and uncaring, whether that's in the form of marrying her crush or turning into a cat.

The resolution of the romantic aspect is too clean for my liking. Muge never really faces any consequences for her creepy behaviour, and is ultimately accepted. I don't think she should have been taken down, but for her to learn that, among the other lessons she learns, that this sort of behavior is not okay would have really helped. But she doesn't, and the film ends up sending a rather toxic message as a result.

There are other aspects to this film though that are much better. Ultimately, A Whisker Away is a story about depression, loneliness, and the desire to run away and escape. One could either read her plight as a little desire to run away or a metaphor for suicide, but it all amounts to the same thing; the idea of leaving your life behind in search of something that seems to be better. Muge needs something to hold on to, and doesn't realize that she has just that already until it's almost gone. This subversion of the transformation daydream that I constantly found myself having as a kid was striking to me, and really spoke to the amount of growth I've done between them and now. Even in spite of her worst personality traits, I found myself able to relate to Muge intensely, even though the specifics of her situation were different.

Hinode is also quite the interesting character, serving as a foil to Muge in a way that I wish was more commented on in its finale. In the dichotomy between the two, the theme of masks takes on a more metaphorical sense. Hinode wears a mask of apathy because he's too afraid to state his mind. Muge wears a mask of happiness because she doesn't think anyone actually cares. In this sense, they are quite good for each other in a way - I just don't think that the way their relationship develops is at all healthy or organic.

A Whisker Away is also an incredibly beautiful film. The rendition of the cats are loving and adorable, the composition and animation fluid and gorgeous, and the more fantastical elements are wonderfully realized - so much so that I wish the film had spent more time there. It's a world and presentation that makes the film easy to be swept away in, so much so that it can be tough to notice the film's flaws until looking back in hindsight.

Overall, I feel very conflicted about this film. On the one hand, it's a beautiful story about a girl finding her place in the world, and realizing just how much her loved ones mean to her when she almost loses them. It's one that spoke to me and the lost child I once was. But it all hinges on a romance subplot that is unhealthy and poorly developed, and this seriously drags it down. I wanted to love A Whisker Away, but I couldn't. But I also couldn't bring myself to hate it, either.