Personally i'd rather re-watch The Cat Retruns, but this was interesting enough too.

Imagine if Jim Carrey's "The Mask" was more of a fantasy romance tale about a neurotic who wanted to fall in love with a specific someone, with a little taste of The Cat Returns in terms of trying to escape the villain fantasy aspect of this cat world (Japan sure loves their cats); you'd get this film.

Now while I can appreciate the story and how adorable it is at times, some work needs to be done, for one the pacing needs a lot of work. I checked the runtime for what I thought was the 3rd act start and turns out there was still an hour left, that's when I realized the first and second act was rushed like hell. And that rushed paced doesn't help the "complicated" characterization of our lead, is she a stalker whose in way over her head and can't take a hint? or is she a sad girl with a lot of emotional baggage thanks to family problems and putting on a different kind of mask herself (wink wink), honestly I'm not smart enough to say at first; I can understand both ends of the pond, and I will say if the first 2 acts were stretched out more and that hour and 45-minute runtime was trimmed a bit, we coulda had some better writing.

However with the story we got, I will say it subverted my expectations with how it would progress, there's a bit where I thought it was gonna be like The Cat Returns where its a "journey rescue mission" to get back to the person who introduced the whole cat mask aspect in the first place, but the movie actually let time pass and we "see what happens" before we're taken into a said rescue mission. I can't go into anymore detail without spoiling it so I will say I was impressed with that aspect though.