Audience reviews
20 · Sample from the first available page, separate from the total number of ratings.
Seshi_
Anime that makes you feel bad while watching it.
Death, a zombie rebirth, and emptiness that echos. Watch this if you’re okay with that feeling.
None of the characters in this show are doing anything of value, they just take away from their surroundings on repeat. Starting from the first scene, nothing is going to go right for anyone in this show, and it isn’t afraid to show you a dark place that is unforgiving.
Even when you get a little bit of hope for the characters in this show, it doesn’t resound. Bleak, unforgivable actions continue to show through the entire movie.
As far as the art goes, there is something enjoyable about watching the mini acts that appear when the topics of death and rebirth arise, the flow of the universe the author created for us is what I enjoyed most.
Read at the sourceStewPid_
To a child, grief is all the adventures they planned to go on that are now impossible.
The movie really feels like a last hurrah for characters we have known forever, even though the film is only half and hour. The story expertly positions you to view the world through the eyes of a child. The characters are so familiar, using our assumed knowledge of emotions to fill in the blanks of their life.
Cat Soup is a gorgeous film that is absurd when it wants to be, and crushingly realistic when it needs to be.
TLDR: They did that pig dirty.
Read at the sourcedeereiss
Watching Cat Soup is like watching a weird dream that mirrors the fear of death, the unsettling feeling connected to it, the loss of the loved ones and the inability to accept it.
This anime is surreal, incoherent and unsettling, but in a way that keeps you glued to the screen.
It was able to impress me, do you know when at night you have a very strange and illogical dream, but when you wake up and you think about it you end up realising that it’s the result of worries, fears and moods that you experienced in your life? Well, watching Cat Soup is like watching one of these dreams.
Read at the sourceJJ_Wip7
“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 Ny…
Read at the sourceDonKotarak
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.
Read at the sourceMojoJ0j0_
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 t…
Read at the sourcemoxplant
I'm writing this review after reading most of Nekojiru's work, however Cat Soup was my introduction to her. Knowing more about her story, her death, and her work, this short feels like a true love-letter to Nekojiru as a person, rather than just as a creator. It features the more introspective and absurdist chapters from Nekojiru Udon, and strings them together into a beautiful narrative about life and death, and everything between.
This is the kind of thing that requires some background to fully appreciate and understand, however it can still be enjoyed by a complete outsider to Nekojiru's work, although its meanings and message may seem a little vague. I'd highly recommend you watch this, loock at Nekojiru's work, specifically Nekojiru Udon Volume 1, and then go back to watch it a seco…
Read at the sourceSufferingMeguca
I love this OVA but it’s hard to talk about because my attachment to it is more emotional than anything that I could easily articulate.
Everytime I watch it I have been at a different point in my life, but it always invokes the same melancholic helplessness. The sense of being buoyed along in a cruel and senseless journey with some hope, but no expectation, of catharsis or resolution.
When I first saw Cat Soup twenty or so years ago I was fixated on the fact that the original mangaka Nekojiro took her own life. I think I latched onto this as though it lent some kind of legitimacy or profundity to the OVA. Since then I have come to see it less as some dark window into a suicidal mind or a cry for help and more an expression of common human emotional experiences filtered through somebody e…
Read at the sourceDisappointment17
Hauntingly beautiful. The visuals are so striking and otherworldly. There are so many creative ideas thrown about that it’s sort of hard to really keep track of what is happening. However, I think attaching meaning to every little scene is a bit wrong. Yes the imagery is symbolic of various ideas but we as the viewer are meant to react in awe contrasting the expressionless reactions of the adorable cats as they walk through both hellish and dreamlike landscapes. The humor is very dry and dark, but instead of it being edgy for the sake of being weird it adds to the atmosphere. I also love the music, as it perfectly captures the vibes of the scenes. Oddly enough, for a movie with no supposed “meaning” it made me very emotional. There’s an odd and inexplicable sense of melancholy with a beaut…
Read at the sourceZigizmund
Why cook cats?
I won't talk about Nekojiru work... because this title itself speaks of Nekojiru work
yes, this is exactly how this film is not the work of Nekojiru... this is a film about the work of Nekojiru.
this is a film epitaph, a film honor, a film last bow
the only meaning of the film is to make references to other works of the author. I don't quite understand who this film is for... for whom? for people who are unfamiliar with creativity? or for fans? and perhaps this film for Nekojiru, just a tribute...
I don't know but I like that aura of this piece
Read at the sourceCrewCONTROL
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.
Read at the sourceNextUniverse
(The following review intends to sync foretold viewing experience into the said review.)
"Nekojiru-sou" or "Cat Soup" is a… is a… is a… "Nekojiru-sou" or "Cat Soup" is an OVA. It's about two cats, siblings to one another, Nyako and Nyatta.
The two are unorthodox, they, do stuff, and…
Honestly… what?
I know what it is! It's a crazy trip, a trip like no other. Hmm. How exactly do I explain that trip? A ton of vivid events and abstract motion takes place? A load of stuff aiming to tell something that requires a good knowledge of visual storytelling. Man, is that just people being irrational again .-.
Erm. What else is there? I wouldn't know, last time I tried reviewing this, I couldn't because there was just stuff that did nothing. A seemingly awful and empty joke a whole team and studi…
Read at the sourceCFKaligula
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.
Read at the sourceaoringo13
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.
Read at the sourcetawer21
What an amazing piece of art, of course it was made by Yuasa. Cat Soup is a surreal/symbolic anime that metaphorizes mankind and its relationship with god and earth through the journey of some silly cats.
We see multiple scenes where the cats mistreat the enviroment, abusing both creatures and animals (pork, the circus, etc). At the end, after a deluge and some more biblic references, the main character finally understands how to live properly: spreading love and respect.
Thats what the flower and the mechahearth represent, and thats why his sister is brought back to life.
What i really didnt find a convincing explanation for was the tv twist at the ending, but besides that, most of the things have a reason for being in the film
9/10.
Read at the sourceephemerry
Nekojiru is the pseudonym for a mangaka that had a brief stint of popularity in the '90s, and was known for purveying a sense of strikingly cruel, social commentary from the perspective of young, cat characters. Nekojiru is a portmanteau of the Japanese words: neko ねこ "cat", and shiru しる "soup," creating ねこぢる ("cat soup"). The creator was born Chiyomi Nakayama, and then would later change her name to Chiyomi "Hashiguchi." Ms. Hashiguchi tragically died on May 10th, 1998, from suicide, only eight days after the death of HIDE from X Japan. People close to Ms. Hashiguchi claim that the two had nothing to do with each other, the mangaka had stated that she didn't like rock music because it was too "noisy" and preferred to listen to Aphex Twin records.
From Ms. Hashiguchi's biography, she see…
Read at the sourceJVskunkape
The best part of cat soup was when he crapped in the ocean, some fish ate it and then those fish were caught by a pig and proceed into their own little animation segment.
This anime also confirms then denies the flat earth theory.
Although I left this OVA as a general positive experience I would also say I was slightly let down and underwhelmed, maybe because I had heard it's praises sung so high. You can look at other reviews and opinions of it to see what I mean. It's definitely not however at the other end of the spectrum, I wouldn't call cat soup a masterpiece but it's definitely worth a watch. Approaching Halloween it's possibly even one of the best topical anime you could stick on right now.
There are some depictions which can be considered sensitive such as violence towards anim…
Read at the sourceManPersonGuyDude
TW: Discussion of domestic abuse
Cat soup is…a really weird movie. Watching it is something of an experience, since plotlines emerge and disappear in the blink of an eye, all the while fast-paced trippy imagery makes it hard to really understand what’s even going on. Drawing some kind of overarching analysis out of it and claiming that to be the point of the film would be disingenuous because there isn’t really a point to be drawn or a moral to be learned. Still, its imagery is far too interesting to leave alone, and prodding at it until it vomits something up makes for some interesting discussion, whether intended or not.
The film follows two cats, brother and sister, and begins with the latter’s death. As the grim reaper arrives to take her, her brother refuses to accept her death and a…
Read at the sourceOptigisa
How could a thirty minute, one episode OVA turn into such excruciating boredom? Simply put, the answer is that this one had no end goal or general direction in mind. It crams - or tries to cram for lack of a better word - several ideas and themes down the viewer’s throat, and tries to present and highlight several topics and issues that aren’t even interminably connected, to the point where it becomes blurry as to what it’s reach and end goal is. It presents several ideas of religion, the circle of life, death and the afterlife, etc. yet it never explains why they are there. These are all good ideas, and the presentation is not iffy in the slightest, but the problem here arises from how forced the presentation feels. What is the general point of this short movie other than showcasing sever…
Read at the sourceTerajima
'Cat Soup' is a medium-length film in which two cats go on a journey, let's say it like that and let's see it that way, since one of the reasons why some people do not like 'Cat Soup' is because it doesn't have a clear narrative story. During the trip many things will happen, all of them with a very interesting metaphorical or symbolic sense.
The atmosphere is amazing, at times reminiscent of David Lynch, animation is wonderful, tremendously original and beautiful, and if it is so original it is because it copies many things, it is almost impossible to do something that does not already exist, originality consists of copying many things until the sources are diffused, and not just one as would do those who are not innovative. And the sources of 'Cat Soup' are many, the director's own visi…
Read at the source
