Cats and Peachtopia

I know it’s gonna sound like a retread of my establishing prelude to Crazy Rich Asians, but…:  My history with Asian animation is embarrassingly shallow.  My first tastes, like many children Stateside, came from syndicated and dubbed bits of what we used to call Japanimation, things like Maya the Bee and Blinky Bill.  Further light anime series would follow later, like Pokemon and Digimon (I like monsters, whaddya want?); my first Miyazaki wouldn’t come until college.  Around the same time came things like Grave of the Fireflies and Akira, alongside Adult Swim’s take on Shin Chan.  Since then, I haven’t added all that much, really: I’ve deepened my understanding of Ghibli, introduced myself to Kon Satoshi, taken down classic series like Trigun, and have even come close to developing nosebleeds from a couple Korean knock-offs of popular foreign franchises.  If it’s not obvious, I haven’t mentioned any origin country aside from Japan and a negative nod toward South Korea.  Ooh, if it counts, I’ve got Persepolis on my shelf (I think it’s technically a French production, but it’s created by an Iranian emigre)…

But, yeah, that’s pretty localized.  So, given the opportunity, I readily accepted the chance to catch a modern Chinese production.  Enter Cats and Peachtopia.

I believe I’ve seen director Gary Wang’s previous efforts in articles or something, but nothing was ever intriguing enough for me to take a chance on.  Moreover, given the recent co-productions between China and the US, namely Rock Dog and Duck Duck Goose, I’ve been quite wary of the concept of Chinese animation.  Thankfully, I found myself rather pleasantly surprised by this particular little film.

The plot centers on tubby cat Blanket.  He’s content to sit around his apartment, never venturing outside, mostly thanks to a pair of traumatic experiences earlier in his life.  His son, Cape (I’ve also seen it translated as “Cloak”, but I couldn’t tell you which is correct), meanwhile, as a yen to see what he’s missing in the Great Wide Somewhere, one that’s stoked with the new arrival of fellow pet Mack, a macaw.  Thanks to some YouTube videos (seriously), Cape fashions a rocket out of household supplies and heads off to the nearby mountains, where he believes Peachtopia to be, a sort of feline Eden with plenty of peach trees and open space and whatnot.  Understandably worried for his son, Blanket sets off in pursuit, aided by Mack.  Things get a bit harrowing when a glass-blowing artist and his gang of raccoons (also seriously) joins in on the chase, looking for subjects for live mold-making.

Without much reflection, it’s painfully obvious that this film was heavily influenced by Finding Nemo, following many of that film’s plot points to a T, just more terrestrially and with more cats.  There’s also a Secret Life of Pets vibe, but Nemo is the predominant jumping-off point here.  It gets a bit distracting, but it doesn’t ultimately ruin the experience.  There’s a handful of songs included, and they’re pretty solid, decidedly shorter than analogs from other countries’ films, but they’re also kinda forgettable, save the first one, which, for some reason, is done in the style and melody of “Viva Las Vegas” (the tune and the arts-and-crafts-corner visual motif sell the number).  The voice acting is generally pretty solid as well.

It’s the animation that really surprised me, though.  Given the two co-productions named above, I was expecting some middle-of-the-road animation at best, but this was pretty damn good.  The non-living aspects of the backgrounds are amazing, and the character models all show an impressive level of detail and character.  Movement is fluid, though some spots are a touch jerky, as though some interstitial frames are missing.  The camera is a tiny bit wonky at times as well, floating about like a more controlled and omniscient Dark Souls situation (think the cut scenes mixed with the gameplay), but this phenomenon doesn’t occur too often.

On the negative side, the pacing becomes an issue, feeling rather languid and overly-leisurely and stretching the runtime in my brain.  Cape feels far too attuned to doctorate-level engineering skills, crafting not only a rocket without thumbs, but also a diving apparatus and a makeshift submarine/ship.  This wouldn’t bother me so much if any of the other animals was anywhere near as enterprising, but alas.  And there’s also a strange inconsistency regarding whether or not humans can understand the animals’ speech, but this only comes up once or twice (possibly making it all the more maddening for me, honestly).

Ultimately, though, the film is fairly touching and decidedly well done.  Though the ending is a bit too, I don’t know, easy on the characters’ psyches, I was left feeling some feels and contemplating the meaning of freedom and living life to the fullest.  Not bad for a fluffy retread of Finding Nemo with urban cats, eh?