Watched as a Recent Miyazaki convert and found this to be a Weak telling of the tale that sacrifices story for singing mice and cut and paste action and style, courtesy of Sleeping Beauty
Firstly, this a poor retelling of the classic fairy tale of a con artist cat with dreams of grandeur. The cat's motivations are never made clear. His cunning skills of con artistry are never established, but you do get 25 minutes of scheming cats and friendly mice singing songs about friendship.
The biggest change here, is that most of the plot of this adaptation revolves around the villain, the devil himself. Yeah, satan. It sounds cool but it wasn't.
Everything about the devil plotline (which takes up most of the films runtime) was so blatantly lifted from disney's Sleeping Beauty, it was hard for me to feel like I was watching something other than a third rate knockoff...
The green faced, black cloaked villain crashing the royal event to threaten the princess, the black and green color palettes, the green fire, the castle fortress with other black and green demonic critters running up and down spiral staircases and towers and draw bridges.
All that is fine as an artistic influence, but this adds nothing to the plot and the animation falls so short compared to the innovative gothic art style of sleeping beauty, it's unfathomable this was In fact made, a whole decade later.
I found the art style strange as well, like a mish mash of traditional anime with a Hanna Barbera cartoon. It felt like two different movies trying to co exist a lot of the time.
Firstly, this a poor retelling of the classic fairy tale of a con artist cat with dreams of grandeur. The cat's motivations are never made clear. His cunning skills of con artistry are never established, but you do get 25 minutes of scheming cats and friendly mice singing songs about friendship.
The biggest change here, is that most of the plot of this adaptation revolves around the villain, the devil himself. Yeah, satan. It sounds cool but it wasn't.
Everything about the devil plotline (which takes up most of the films runtime) was so blatantly lifted from disney's Sleeping Beauty, it was hard for me to feel like I was watching something other than a third rate knockoff...
The green faced, black cloaked villain crashing the royal event to threaten the princess, the black and green color palettes, the green fire, the castle fortress with other black and green demonic critters running up and down spiral staircases and towers and draw bridges.
All that is fine as an artistic influence, but this adds nothing to the plot and the animation falls so short compared to the innovative gothic art style of sleeping beauty, it's unfathomable this was In fact made, a whole decade later.
I found the art style strange as well, like a mish mash of traditional anime with a Hanna Barbera cartoon. It felt like two different movies trying to co exist a lot of the time.