She and Her Cat: Their Standing Points

Name(s): She and Her Cat: Their Standing Points / Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko / 彼女と彼女の猫
Format: Original video animation [OVA] (1 4-minute episode)
Release Date(s): March 4, 2016 – March 25, 2016
Studio(s): CoMix Wave Films

She and Her Cat: Their Standing Points Review

She and Her Cat is a particularly popular short, because anime fans and cats go together a lot better than anime fans and—well, the jokes write themselves. This monochrome 4-minute OVA is narrated by a cat (voiced by director Makoto Shinkai) who primarily shares observations of his owner.

I’m not really sure what this one is going for. In ways, it feels like a comedy, with the cat’s ridiculously deep, monotone voice contrasting its cute, minimalist design. The cat’s narration is overwrought with flowery prose as well. However, it’s superficially presented as a drama with emotional heft to the delivery, and a somber, grey hue.

The message it seems to be going for here is how pets and their owners take for granted the experiences they share due to being unable to communicate, but I can’t really get much out of this perspective, because I can’t relate it to real life. I have a pet peeve with people projecting human emotions and reactions onto animals. Some seem to think animals’ thought processes and expressions are just microcosmic versions of what people feel.

A direct example is how people will look at a dog’s face and see the dog as smiling, even though dogs are incapable of making that expression the way humans do. This makes sense, because humans evolved to have complex facial expressions to complement their complicated brains. Animals, meanwhile, usually only need to communicate their simple ideas through small gestures and sounds.