Studio Ghibli cats are everywhere in the studio’s catalogue, and almost none of them are decoration. A cat carries a girl through a forest at night. A cat stops talking and the film treats it as a graduation. A cat in a top hat walks out of one movie and headlines another one seven years later. The animals are doing structural work, and the folklore behind them is older than the studio by several centuries.
There is also a persistent credit problem. Two of the most cat-heavy films in the Ghibli library were not directed by Hayao Miyazaki, and the internet keeps giving him the credit anyway. Let us fix that first, then get to what the cats mean.
Table of Contents
- Not Every Studio Ghibli Cat Is a Miyazaki Cat
- The Catbus: Whimsy with Folkloric Echoes
- Jiji: The Cat Who Stops Talking
- The Baron and Muta: Two Films, Two Directors
- Miyazaki Animated a Famous Cat Before Ghibli Existed
- A Catbus Sequel Made for the Museum
- What These Cats Bring to the Stories
- FAQ
Not Every Studio Ghibli Cat Is a Miyazaki Cat
Studio Ghibli cats get filed under “Miyazaki” by default, and that habit erases two other directors who mattered enormously to the studio.
Whisper of the Heart was directed by Yoshifumi Kondō
Whisper of the Heart (1995) was directed by Yoshifumi Kondō, from Aoi Hiiragi’s manga. Ghibli’s official credits distinguish his role from Miyazaki’s work on the screenplay and storyboards. The collaboration matters: this is a Ghibli film with Miyazaki’s involvement, but the director’s chair was Kondō’s.
It was his only feature as director, but hardly his only contribution to animation. Ghibli’s retrospective of Kondō’s work includes films from Grave of the Fireflies to Princess Mononoke. The quiet observation in Whisper of the Heart belongs to a much longer career. Its unimpressed, train-riding cat is a particularly good ambassador for that patient attention to character.
The Cat Returns was directed by Hiroyuki Morita
The Cat Returns (2002) was directed by Hiroyuki Morita. The studio’s film record credits Miyazaki with project planning, Aoi Hiiragi with the original work, and Reiko Yoshida with the screenplay. It lists a Japanese release on 20 July 2002 and a running time of about seventy-five minutes. Morita turns an encounter with a cat into a whole kingdom’s worth of trouble.
The Catbus: Whimsy with Folkloric Echoes
The Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro (1988) looks like a sugar rush of a design: a grinning, twelve-legged cat with a hollow body and fur-lined seats. It is both an animal and public transport, with none of the usual compromises about legroom. That mixture of the familiar and impossible is a large part of its appeal.
It also invites comparison with Japan’s supernatural cats. Bakeneko stories involve cats with uncanny powers, while nekomata are often depicted with divided tails. The MassArt Art Museum’s character guide describes the two-tailed nekomata tradition through a contemporary sculpture. These are useful cultural echoes for reading the Catbus, rather than a rigid species chart that explains every part of its design.
Twelve legs and a grin
Read through that lens, the Catbus makes a familiar animal into something wonderfully strange. In the film, it helps Satsuki find Mei and carries the sisters through a landscape that suddenly works by different rules. We do not need to imagine an official feline transformation age to enjoy the connection with folklore. For a wider look at cats assigned supernatural duties, see our history of black cat superstitions.
One small bonus for the taxonomy nerds: the velvet worm Eoperipatus totoro was described in 2013. A study of Ghibli-inspired animal names traces its naming to the film and the resemblance to its many-legged vehicle. Somewhere between animation and zoology, the Catbus has acquired a surprisingly respectable academic connection.
Jiji: The Cat Who Stops Talking
In Kiki’s Delivery Service (1989), directed by Miyazaki, the black cat Jiji talks. Rei Sakuma voiced him in Japanese. During her crisis of confidence, she can no longer understand Jiji or fly, and in the original Japanese cut she never gets it back.
The silence can feel sad, but it also makes sense as part of a coming-of-age story. Kiki is learning to build relationships away from home; even her oldest companionship changes. Reading Jiji as an echo of her earlier self does not mean he was literally imaginary or that their conversations never happened. The emotional point is that growing up can change a bond without ending it.
What the Disney dub changed
The 1998 Disney English dub cast Phil Hartman as a wisecracking Jiji and added dialogue, including a final question asking whether Kiki can hear him. That invites a different reading of their reunion: the voice seems to return. DVDizzy’s direct comparison of the DVD editions documents both the added line and its removal in the 2010 release. A very small sound edit can make a surprisingly large difference to an ending.
This is voice adaptation, which can change timing, characterization, or the balance between speech and silence. It does not require rebuilding every sound in a film. Foley, the performance of sounds such as footsteps and rustling clothes, is a separate part of sound production. Jiji’s different versions are a good reminder that the language track you hear can shape the cat you remember.
The Baron and Muta: Two Films, Two Directors
The most interesting cat lineage at Ghibli runs across seven years and two directors. In Whisper of the Heart, Shizuku follows a large tabby off a train and ends up at an antique shop, where a cat figurine in a suit and top hat becomes the seed of the story she writes. That figurine is Baron Humbert von Gikkingen.
In The Cat Returns, Morita takes the same Baron and gives him a whole film. Here he is alive, running the Cat Bureau, and voiced by Yoshihiko Hakamada in Japanese and Cary Elwes in English. The heavy tabby from the train reappears as Muta, formally Renaldo Moon, voiced by Tetsu Watanabe and Peter Boyle. The protagonist Haru Yoshioka, who can hear cats speak, saves a cat from a truck, learns it was Prince Lune, and gets rewarded with catnip, mice, and an unwanted engagement to the very prince she rescued.
The two films also share a literary connection through Aoi Hiiragi, whose work supplies their source material. The Cat Returns is a spin-off, so the Baron’s leap from figurine to active hero need not be treated as a literal sequel to every event in Shizuku’s life. The pleasure lies in seeing a suggestive character given room to move.
What makes the pair worth watching back to back is the register shift. Kondō’s film is grounded realism about a teenager deciding whether she can write. Morita’s is portal fantasy with a wedding threat. The cat is the hinge between them, and the story only works because a figurine on a shelf in one film has enough presence to open a door in the next. It is the same trick that magical realism uses when it lets an ordinary object stay ordinary and be impossible at the same time.
Miyazaki Animated a Famous Cat Before Ghibli Existed
Long before Ghibli was founded in 1985, Miyazaki worked as a key animator on Toei’s The Wonderful World of Puss ’n Boots (1969). Directed by Kimio Yabuki, the film gives its feline hero an adventure of his own. It belongs to Miyazaki’s early animation career, rather than the Ghibli catalogue; the distinction is useful when following his cats across the years.
The cat in that film, Pero, became Toei Animation’s mascot and logo. So, years before Miyazaki turned a cat into a bus, he helped animate one that would become a studio’s calling card. Cats do appear to be unusually good at securing permanent positions.
A Catbus Sequel Made for the Museum
Mei and the Kittenbus (2002), listed by the museum as Mei and the Baby Cat Bus, is a miniature sequel to Totoro. The Ghibli Museum’s catalogue gives its running time as thirteen minutes and forty-three seconds, with Miyazaki directing and Joe Hisaishi composing the music. Mei befriends a tiny Catbus and goes for a nighttime ride. Apparently the transport network has a nursery fleet.
The short was made for the museum-screening experience, rather than a standard home-video release. It is part of a rotating programme: a museum ticket does not mean this particular film will be showing. If it is the reason for your trip, check the venue’s official programme before booking. A tiny Catbus is a charming destination, but a rather expensive scheduling misunderstanding.
What These Cats Bring to the Stories
Line them up and a pattern suggests itself: many of these cats act as guides across a boundary. Sometimes it is a physical journey, sometimes a change in confidence or imagination. That is a reading of the films, not a single official answer that every Ghibli cat must obey.
- Catbus: crosses the boundary between the visible world and the extraordinary landscape the sisters encounter, at the moment the family is closest to breaking.
- Jiji: marks Kiki’s move toward greater independence, and marks the transition by going silent rather than by speaking.
- Muta: literally leads Shizuku off a train and into the antique shop where she becomes a writer.
- The Baron: crosses media, from figurine to fiction to feature film, and drags a whole spin-off with him.
- Pero: outside the Ghibli catalogue, turns a Toei film role into a lasting place in the studio’s identity.
Supernatural-cat traditions offer one way to think about those crossings, but each film gives its animals different work to do. The Cat King can be threatening; the Catbus is a reassuring presence despite that enormous grin. Strangeness does not have to mean danger. A creature that looks alarming on paper can become exactly the ride a frightened child needs.
That may also be why the cats do not need detailed origin stories. Nobody in Totoro asks where the Catbus is garaged. The absence of a maintenance manual lets the encounter keep its mystery. These films give us enough to follow the characters and leave room to wonder about the world around them.
FAQ
Did Hayao Miyazaki direct The Cat Returns?
No. Hiroyuki Morita directed the 2002 film. Miyazaki contributed project planning; the screenplay is credited to Reiko Yoshida, based on work by Aoi Hiiragi.
Why does Jiji stop talking in Kiki’s Delivery Service?
A coming-of-age reading connects the change with Kiki becoming more independent. In the original Japanese ending, Jiji’s human speech does not return. The first Disney dub added a line suggesting that it did; the 2010 DVD removed it. The film leaves more room for interpretation than a simple rule about how witches lose a power.
What is the Catbus based on?
It can be read alongside Japanese supernatural-cat traditions, including bakeneko and nekomata. Its transformation and odd anatomy fit that imaginative territory, but calling it a precise folkloric species goes beyond what the film explains. It is also, very unmistakably, a bus.
Can I watch Mei and the Kittenbus at home?
It was made as a museum short, rather than part of the regular home-viewing catalogue. Check official venue programmes if you hope to see it: screenings rotate, so it is not guaranteed on every visit.
Which Ghibli film should I watch first if I only care about the cats?
Try Whisper of the Heart followed by The Cat Returns. That order lets you meet the tabby and the figurine before seeing their spin-off adventure. It is a rewarding pairing, not a compulsory continuity test; The Cat Returns can also stand on its own.
The Short Version
The cats in these films are load-bearing. The Catbus offers reassurance in an impossible shape. Jiji makes a changing childhood friendship audible, then quiet. The Baron starts as a figurine in a film directed by Yoshifumi Kondō and becomes an adventurer under Hiroyuki Morita. Give the credits to the right people, leave a little room for interpretation, and the animals get more interesting. No cat-garage diagram required.
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