Cat Soup – A Parody of World and a Satire of Humans

Last weekend I finished watching the weirdest animation ever: Cat Soup. As bizarre as its title suggests, this short movie which runs for about 32 minutes shocks me with disturbing weirdness and then plunges me into a series of deep observation and analysis on a plethora of ambiguous metaphors. The entire movie sends a strange coldness down your spine. It is definitely a negative, pessimistic, and well-crafted piece of work.

I thought about the prevalence of Cat Soup in pop culture as I try to keep myself consistent, but I came to the conclusion that regardless of its complete irrelevance, I strongly want to recommend this short film to our readers. For starters, I’m going to do a quick recap. Nyatta’s older sister, Nyaako’s soul is taken away by Jizou (Japanese equivalent of Ksitigarbha). Nyatta chased after and retrieved half of her soul back. Nyaako wakes up brain-dead. Nyatta and Nyaako begin their journey of finding the other half of her soul sealed in a flower as hinted by Jizou. Within the journey lies the bizarre and disturbing scenes where this movie carries out most messages. (A complete recap of this movie can be found in this Wikipedia entry)

After my first view of Cat Soup, my sixth sense was telling me that there are definitely more hidden messages that haven’t been revealed to me until the second or third time of watching it. Out of curiosity I searched on Google for similar review articles, expecting to find a comprehensive interpretation or posts of similar sort somewhere on the net. Unfortunately I had no luck. I felt as though so many interpretations are out there, yet not many have shared them on the Internet. Immediately the idea of this article was born. I will try to interpret every scene in my personal way, hoping to share my opinions and experiences with those of you who have watched Cat Soup (watch out for spoilers if you are reading this prior to watching). This isn’t a standard review or professional analysis, but simply a jar of personal thoughts mixed with emotions and wild conjectures, as you might call it.

The simple opening sequence features paws and calligraphy on creamy paper. Camera pans around in random motions to capture a sequence of footprints alongside opening credits. And then stuff gets weird as you see random feathers, twitching tree branches, and paper screens poked with holes. Finally we stop at the title: Nekojiru-so (Cat Soup).

Nyatta shows up with his gigantic and absent-minded eyes. He then brings some toys to play in the tub. Right after he accidentally falls and gets stuck in the water, camera sweeps the ground and scans over a dead insect being sliced by an army of ants. The scene then settles in ill Nyaako’s room. A dead insect and an army of carnivorous ants, inserted between Nyaako and Nyatta, foreshadow one of the major themes: death. We then see a distorted and creepy first person view of her room and Jisou by Nyaako and Nyatta appearing drowned in the tub. It appears that Nyaako is dead and about to be taken away by Jisou.

 Nyatta gets out of the bathroom and receives attention from neither his dad or mom. This gives a sign that will only be interpreted later in the movie. As Nyatta walks towards the deck, he sees his sister Nyaako being escorted away by Jisou. Nyatta then starts chasing after Jisou and while doing so, meets three housewives blabbering about some rubber-rubbing screeching noise on the sidewalk, which appears to be some conversation.

Strangely they all have some air stoppers on their backs and Nyatta randomly pulls out one of those. As a result one of the cats flattens like an empty balloon while the other two simply continue socializing.

I personally loved this part and think it’s quite easy to understand. First of all conversations of housewives on streets are typically superficial and full of small talk. They mainly consist of praising each other’s clothes, making useless comments on each other’s life, and bragging about their own matters. This kind of conversation is ubiquitous not only in Japan but in honor-driven societies as well. While being part of their culture, time-wasting conversations like this are nothing more than air balloons talking to each other, with no real content. As Nyatta let the air of one cat escape, the other two continue their conversation, which clearly manifests the minute importance of any participant in this kind of conversation. I see this as a relatively clear reflection of a negatively shown aspect of Japanese society. Too much small talk, too little sincerity. At least it seems so to the story’s author, if my interpretation is any good.

Nyatta continues running down the road of darkness and, to be short, fights Jisou, gets half of Nyaako’s soul back, and gets the hint that he needs the flower to retrieve the other half. Then Nyatta runs back home. Nothing particularly hit me here except the fact that he tries to disrupt the natural pattern of birth and death, which is what humans have been doing for ages – disrupting nature for our good.

Soon a little seemingly out-of-place scene appears where Nyatta is drowned in the tub again and discovered by his father and frantic mother. Out of chronology again the scene switches to Nyaako lying dead and his family crying. I wasn’t the first one to notice this but smart readers at  this point would probably have realized, one actually did not die but the other did.

Now we see some connections formed. Nyaako has been ill the entire time and Nyatta drowned himself. In Nyatta’s unwillingness to die and illusion of his sister’s death, he tries to retrieve his sister’s soul which probably symbolizes that of his own. Thus this setting enables the entire movie to be a tracker of Nyatta’s illusions and utilizes it to carry out many other important themes. The show has just begun.

As Nyatta carefully let Nyaako’s soul run into her mouth, Nyaako wakes up brain-dead. Here we have her creepy hallucinations again. Probably she wakes up feeling lifeless and emotionless, moreover creepy and weird.

Nyatta and Nyaako’s mom tells them to buy fried tofu, Nyatta drags his lifeless sister to the convenient store. On their way back, they saw the Big Whale Circus. Circuses are always a symbol of animal abuse and human cruelty in my opinion. It features a disturbing show of cutting a real bunny girl into bloody pieces and body juices splashing all over and coming off the stage. Then the almighty god-like figure, supposedly the magician, casts some strange spell and collects all the little flesh pieces into a big swirl which transforms back into that bunny girl in a whooshing snap. I don’t know what I can say about this part, the most intuitive message I sensed is the morbid manipulation of human flesh. With the fascinating biotechnology we developed, such as human clone, DNA modification, organ transplantation and artificial fertilization, do we really fundamentally change or improve our own species? Or is it all just a merry-go-around that eventually returns to its original state like the bunny girl did? We dissect and exploit nature, causing global problems, and then try to fix everything thinking that we are smart and being nice. Isn’t that just as pointless as cutting a human into pieces and gluing them back with magic?

The show continues with a penguin-looking translucent creature with a tiny flamingo head on top of a gigantic body filled with cloud and rain. It immediately occurred to me that this tank contains “weather”. Then there are several little men playing the tug of war tightening a noose around the penguin’s foot, causing painful reactions which turn out to be spitting out beautifully shaped and colored geometries. These geometric shapes look sharp and man-made, which makes me ponder about this metaphor in which humans appropriate the nicest resources from nature and turn them into what we appreciate. The penguin can’t stand the pain and is eventually killed and explodes into a disastrous flood. Nyatta and Nyaako meanwhile happen to be riding on a little boat with Mr. Pig, who looks stupidly innocent. This disaster foreshadows  what could happen to nature if we keep taking resources from it inconsiderately.

Before continuing the plot, Nyatta’s little fascination brings forward a random animation. This animation features several dead bird babies, decomposing into earth, nurturing a plant and the plant in turn produces the babies in fruit cores. This animation seems to be out of place and is one of those outright thematic messages delivered by this movie. It also serves well as a juxtaposition of the unnatural and cruel process of torturing the penguin (weather) to satisfy human desires (weather control) and the natural and peaceful cycle of life and death.

Here comes the morally corrupt part. Mr. Pig offers Nyatta fishies he found gathering around Nyatta’s toilet spot. Nyatta, however, does not thank him and jumps onto Mr. Pig, takes his clothes off and unzips him like a supermarket pork pack, extracts his belly meat, and casually goes on to cook bacon strips. First, pig’s action of offering fishies and Nyatta’s reaction of extorting meat from him are exact representations of natural resources and humans’ greedy takeover compelled by endless dissatisfaction. Nyatta ungratefully exploits his largess and treats him as pork, then gives him back some fried bacon. This feedback shows how self-centered and presumptuous we humans are. The fishies simply sit in the bucket and are like wasted natural resources that we are supposed to be thankful for.

Time for another random animation. One of those fish jumps onto a deck, walking on its “feet” and gets sliced into sashimi by several samurai. The skeleton fish then swims in the ocean, “enjoying” these nasty brown slushy objects sinking down the water. The fish gets washed off shore and some random cat pokes his eye out and eats it. Before you go “poor fishie,” think about the complete exploitation and exhaustion of nature caused by us. Maybe these nasty brown slushy balls can possibly say something about us dumping non-biodegradable trash into the ocean or landfill? Or that resources that we think we don’t need get thrown away unilaterally by us?

Suddenly the scene cuts to God’s dining room. God took Earth out from water and all oceans and seas dry up. It turns out that Nyatta and Nyaako are riding on Mr. Pig’s back in a desert, as we always do to exploit and harness animal power. As Nyatta’s dissatisfied with Mr. Pig’s speed, he hits him on the head with a club repeatedly. Mr. Pig only becomes slower. Just like we keep demanding more from nature, when it’s only being exhausted by us. Blisters grow on Mr. Pig’s head and as Nyatta tries to eat it, he is disgusted by it and “punishes” Mr. Pig by completely hitting him to death. Mr. Pig struggles and bites Nyatta’s arm off. Well what do you expect after ungratefully beating the heck out of he who serves you?

The two go into a house where there’s a sewer (or killer) who sews dead animal parts together. He fixed Nyatta’s arm and Nyatta noticed an array of cradles where dolls made up of unoriginal parts rest in. Is it really a depiction of hospitals? Nyatta and Nyaako continue their journey on the desert. An orange belt of delicious smell flies across and lures them into a giant robot weirdo’s castle, who welcomes the two travelers and serves them well. This setting features a gallery of disturbing and gross pictures. If a gallery is meant to be a collection of remarkable pictures, this wall of nastiness might be our crooked appreciation of this crooked world. Another notable piece is that the giant robot ties a bird onto a nail, keeps it flying in circles and tortures it with hot water and fire. The bird eventually burns to death and becomes Nyatta’s first meal before more extravagant dishes follow. It turns out that the robot put the cats in a huge boiling pot trying to make, oh well, Cat Soup. As he runs out half-naked (and quite funny) with an enormous pair of scissors attempting to make some final prep for his dinner, Nyatta escapes with Nyaako and escapes the crisis.

The desert air is burning hot and the kittens are dying for water. As they drag their toasted bodies across the endless desert, Nyatta accidentally finds a water elephant. Overjoyed by this, he tames the elephant and feeds it water every day. This elephant carries them across miles and miles and at last, as Nyatta isn’t able to make it on time, poor elephant dies off water shortage.

The camera cuts back to God. As He prepares His meal and cuts a planet, a hemisphere falls off the table and gets stuck in the juggernaut time machine. Nyatta and Nyaako experience a deadly still world. Time has frozen. Nyatta plays around in this magical happening and sees a woman trying to commit suicide and jump before a train, of course all static. God tries to retrieve the lost hemisphere and fast forwards the time machine. Random scenes show Nyatta and Nyaako becoming old but God misses the hemisphere again and reverses the machine. The world then goes backward and many significant and abominable historical moments are shown. Humans devolve back to apes, destroyed buildings spring back up, car crashes and dead bodies are restored, guillotine blades lift up, lizards turn back to fish, kamikaze planes return from explosions, and blood-covered body flies back to where it’s hit by car, etc.. These scenes aren’t only “nice to see” but are probably the creator’s intention to show us what obscene and absurd things we have done in this only short span of human existence. I personally also perceived the heaviness of responsibility and impact, our actions and the result of them.

God finally gets to taste his tasty hemisphere and the cats are returned lying on the boat. Let’s assume the world has resumed to its ordinary timeline. The boat floats into a raven cave where metallic flowers and animals grow and thrive. Here Nyatta finally finds his besought flower which supposedly contains half of Nyaako’s soul. And it’s real, she revives with consciousness and buys fried tofu with Nyatta, sauntering back home and having happy family dinner.

The story at this point takes a sharp turn and might even anger you by treating all the previous mind-boggling scenes as if nothing has happened. As the family is having a typical dinner, Nyatta goes to the restroom. When he comes back, everything zips into disappearance like a retro TV. This last part really only illustrates the point that Nyatta is dead, everything he did is within his imagination and doesn’t exist. The world is simply no longer there for him, like a TV signal suddenly getting cut off. When Nyatta realizes nobody’s at home after he comes back from the restroom, I was slightly touched by this sad notion. Nyatta is a good kid, goes through an adventure to save his sister, but only to find out that he is the one who ceases to exist. However the ending isn’t the strong part of this movie, but only there to implement the plot and complete this cycle of nonsense.

So that was indeed a lot of personal explanations and opinions. Overall Cat Soup is definitely the weirdest animation I’ve seen plot-wise. Despite its simplistic and funny character design, this is not a movie for children, but rather, a piece of artwork so overflowing with symbolism and ambiguous metaphors that need extra effort to be interpreted. Moreover, interpretations vary from person to person, some might find it disturbing, some might think it’s not worth contemplating, some might spend hours trying to suck in all the meaningful juices out of it. Whichever way you want to enjoy, or hate this movie, impressions Cat Soup will imprint in your mind will definitely be unforgettable. Without a doubt it’s an extremely well thought out story, accompanied by delicate and expressive animation in which an aura of mixed and complex feelings are delivered. And to ask why I recommend this? It temporarily shifts your mind from the daily mundane and makes you philosophize for at least a while. You may not reach any world-shocking conclusions but to most people these thirty minutes are a powerful and influential spiritual replenishment – a worthwhile and thought-provoking movie that you can’t afford to miss.

At last I want to know, how do you feel after watching? Which part made you ponder and what insightful things did you see from this movie? Share your thoughts with me in the comments section below.