Crunchyroll has announced a new title for its winter 2016 lineup and it's looking pretty great. Set to debut on Friday, the popular streaming service will release a remake of Makoto Shinkai's classic short film from 1999, "She and Her Cat."
The update to the short classic, dubbed "She and Her Cat - Everything Flows," follows the tale of a stray cat, Chobi, as he lives a life with his owner, a girl who rescued him. The story, which mostly adopts a stream-of-consciousness approach, was critically-acclaimed when it was released more than 15 years ago, mainly due to its innovative and artistic style.
The remake of the 1999 short film will feature a pretty good lineup, with director Kazuya Sakamoto and Naruki Nakagawa of "Ergo Proxy" working on the screenplay. Character designs - which, judging by the anime's preview, are changed from the original - are handled by Senbon Umishima, who is also serving as the chief animation director. LIDEN Films Kyoto Studio is producing the remake.
As much as the remake is great news, however, some fans are a bit apprehensive about how the story of "She and Her Cat" would be remade for TV. After all, the source material from 1999 was just a 5-minute story. Though the remake would be in the form of anime shorts, there might just be some aspects of the story that would be changed.
Such is the dilemma for "She and Her Cat - Everything Flows," since most of Shinkai's fans regard the 1999 short film to be a clever artistic piece that is perfect on its own. Of course, when it comes to tampering with what is already perfect, unwanted side effects either on the plot or the characterization sometimes do happen.
As far as one could see, however, it seems like the 2016 remake would be quite faithful to the 1999 classic. The bare-bones cast, listing just the girl, the cat and a friend, seems just right.
As for the plot, the official announcement of the remake also aligns closely with that of the original. In the 1999 short film, a stray cat, Chobi, is adopted by a single, working woman. Through the course of time, the cat starts falling in love with his owner, though he struggles to comprehend her emotions, especially when she gets depressed for a while.
While it is unknown if the intricacies of the plot would remain identical to the source material, the remake has mentioned that the girl in the story would be a college student, which is already a slight departure from Shinkai's work.
Nevertheless, with "She and Her Cat - Everything Flows" based on a work by Makoto Shinkai, anime fans can rest assure that the anime, at the very least, would be emotionally and visually compelling.
