Cat Girl Kiki (Review)

Cat Girl Kiki

aka 萌えキュン@MOVIE 猫耳少女キキ aka Moekyun@Movie Nekomimi Shojo Kiki

2007
Directed by Akiyoshi Sugiura

Everything seems cool until you see her giant kitty litter box!

The Akihabara Trilogy are in essence fetish movies for lovers of girls in costumes. Legend of the Doll and Pretty Maid Cafe are also not very interesting films, and barely even worth mentioning beyond the titles. Cat Girl Kiki, however, has an extra spark of dark what the fuck that makes it memorable, even though it’s completely awful. Cat Girl Kiki will suck the joy out of you and make you question life.

I’m not sure they told Yui Kano anything about her role before they glued cat ears to her head and started filming.

Now, we at TarsTarkas.NET respect when filmmakers take risks. I love it when things happen that are completely different and a director or writer goes against type to try to make something new and magical. And while Cat Girl Kiki could have just been a fun romp with a guy and his magical cat girl having adventures, instead we get a look at a deeply disturbed individual and what happens when you read too much manga and do nothing else.

Psst! I’ll slip you a $20 and some catnip if you break me out of this joint!

Now, it is impossible to discuss the film properly without spoilers, so expect everything to be revealed as I put this film on blast.

Kiki (Yui Kano) – Kiki is a cat girl who appears first as a kitten adopted by Yoshiro, and morphs into a cat girl the next morning. Thus Yoshiro has to teach her how to be human. Too bad he didn’t teach her how to actually exist, because she doesn’t. Spoilers! If anyone is seriously upset over spoilers over a cat girl movie, get a life. Yui Kano is a seiyu. I don’t know what that is. I don’t want to know what that is.
Yoshiro Takagi (Teruaki Uotani) – A loveable loser. Well, not really, he’s more of a pathetic loser with a large collection of prominently displayed porn mangas, costume fetishes, and feline fetishes. His girlfriend cheats on him because he’s so boring, and he withdraws into a freaky fantasy world. A real hikikomori.
Yuka Sanada (Minami Aoyama) – Girlfriend of Yoshiro who decides she needs someone else’s penis inside her. Yet they end up together in the end. Minami Aoyama is a Japanese porn star that you probably saw in Confinement Chair Restriction Trance. Which I think is a subgenre of electronic music…
Shingo Noda (Katsuya Kobayashi) – Yuka’s friend and bathtime fun partner, unfortunately their bathtime fun happens while she is dating Yoshiro, which sends him into a spiral of despair and delusion. Katsuya Kobayashi was also in Kamen Rider Kabuto: God Speed Love and Linda Linda Linda. I would be derelict in my duty to not mention he looks creepy.
Anime. The movie.

Too much good stuff, therefore no copies of this awful flick!

Yoshiro is a depressed loner doing what depressed loners do: being depressed and alone. And going to the store AM/PM. AM/PM, too much good stuff. Which I am told, as their commercials play on the radio all the time here, but I don’t think I’ve ever seen an actual store. Maybe it is an elaborate joke on me! Stupid AM/PM joke. Dick Clark and Ed McMahon are just waiting for me to try to go into one, yet to find out it doesn’t exist… Being depressed naturally this leads him to discover a kitten in a box, which he soon adopts.

The next morning, the kitten is suddenly a Cat Girl! Complete with cat ears. A creepy fetishist’s dream come true! Too bad Yoshiro is too depressed and confused to figure out WTF is going on. The Cat Girl meows, rolls around, and acts 100% like a cat. No speaking Japanese, just pure cat-ese. So Yoshiro watches her play with a ball. People masturbate to this, just so you know. Unless you are masturbating right now, in which case you would know. Please wash your hands before you click anywhere else on TarsTarkas.NET. We try to remain stain-free. So Yoshiro comes up with the name Kiki for Kiki the Cat Girl, and all is well.

We’re going down a road, a creepy road, and we know not where it will go…

Kiki is a cat girl who acts 100% likes a cat yet looks like a hot babe and wears clothes. The film never addresses how she goes to the bathroom, but I didn’t see no litter box! It’s a mystery! How would Cat Girl Kiki deal with her period? Cat tampons? How does she shave her legs? I’m guessing since she appeared by magic, magic can explain all of this (actually, what happens at the end of the film explains it all, but we’ll get to that. Just let me complain about stuff only nerds would care about now. Because that’s what I do.)

But I did see cat tampons for sale at Petco…

AHHHHHHHHHHHHHH!!!!!!!!!!!

Yoshiro starts to teach Kiki to speak and eat at the table with silverware. And to walk upright. She learns fast, so to reward her, Yoshiro gives her a present —> A French Maid outfit!?!?!? Yoshiro has gone and combined fetishes! That’s Japanese efficiency, right there! So now we got Cat Girl Maids. Not to be outdone, the next gift is a Japanese school girl outfit. So Cat Girl School Girls. This is like a collage of fetishes. Thank goodness no one is dumped in buckets of semen.

The film gets more disturbing as Yoshiro sneaks into the room where the sleeping Kiki lies, and starts to lift up her skirt. But doesn’t, and then leaves. Creepy. Especially since she is awake and seemingly confused at what he was doing. Movie making tip: Don’t have your hero be a molesting creep!

Kiki calls Yoshiro a recluse (the exact word is hikikomori, which you should Google if you don’t know) and the word makes Yoshiro go all Emo upset. He starts to beat himself up, but not in a cool Fight Club way, just a lame Emo way. Yoshiro really sucks. He works so hard to be unlikeable. You could argue that he is suffering from depression and therefore not going to be the best person to be around regardless, but from his home displays of manga porn and general personality it is clear he doesn’t go out and do much or even try. Being a recluse living in his own world is his natural state, and he doesn’t want to change.

Most cats just look at you like you’re boring, not like they’re confused. I call shenanigans!

Eventually Yoshiro takes Kiki outside for the first time in her human life (well, cat girl life.) Out there, some weird guy looks at Yoshiro. The weird guy is Shingo Noda from the Roll Call, but at this point we just think he is some creepy dude. Kiki’s amazement of the outside world conflicts with Yoshiro’s uncomfortableness with anything outside his apartment. Instead of her opening up a new world for him and having him break out of his shell, he just stands around looking awkward.

Yeah, right, like a cat’s doing anything even slightly resembling cleaning up the house!

Kiki reads some of Yoshiro’s erotic novels, which mention love honey, which Kiki thinks is real honey, so she goes looks for some. And then they get it on. Which is creepy by itself, but the fact she’s essentially a naive child makes it even grosser. While we don’t know the actual mental age of this magical cat girl, anything that skirts close like this should be approached with caution and not with your wang.

Shingo Noda tells Yuka Sanada that he saw Yoshiro and he was talking to himself, so a worried Yuka goes to visit Yoshiro’s apartment. No one is home, but she sees bras drying on a clothesline out the window. So her and Shingo break into the apartment (classy) to check on Yoshiro. Yoshiro returns home while they are there, searching for Kiki, and he blames them for her being missing. Yuka tries to talk sense into him, but he doesn’t know who she is. He runs out of the apt looking for the missing Kiki. Creeped out yet?

Thank goodness the beans are all digested, then!

Yoshiro returns later, and sees a girl in schoolgirl outfit, thinks it is Kiki, but it is Yuka. Yoshiro then begins to remember her, doing so by remembering him screwing her brains out! But the movie goes all dark when he remembers Yuka having the sex with Shingo in the bathroom while Yoshiro was home. Oops!! Yoshiro begins to freak out. He collapses on the floor, shivering, so the now nude Yuka cuddles up and begins to dry hump him.

Kiki’s picture vanishes, her clothes vanish, and even Yuka vanishes, and now Yoshiro is in a flash of white light and seeing an angel, who looks just like Kiki…

This movie has been huffing too many paint cans.

Furries ruin the Back to the Future remake!

Angel Kiki explains she is just a fantasy that Yoshiro’s subconscious created. And he’s in the hospital. In a coma. A coma caused by remembering your girlfriend cheated on you? Whatever. But if he goes back to consciousness, he won’t remember Kiki. But he has to go back. This scene goes on FOREVER! Just go back, moron! Stop boring the audience. So he finally does, and Yuka is there.

Why am I not a cat angel???

They end up getting back together, and she lies to him, saying it only happened one time, yet in the flashback she says Shingo “knows how to make her feel good”, implying multiple encounters.

So our hero’s life is back to what it was before we met him, until he and Yuka find a kitten in a box. The same kitten from the beginning. Which Yoshiro adopts and names it Kiki. The end.

He’s so going to have sex with that poor cat!

Yoshiro and his massive coma-inducing depression is a worrisome beast. Yoshiro is one of those “nice guys” who aren’t really that nice and are emotionally destructive instead of just an outright dick. Compound that with his reclusive nature and depression turning into massive dependency, and we have the ingredients of a time bomb here. Yuka might not be the best catch in the world, she’s a liar and a cheater, but she’s sticking to Yoshiro from what seems like a combination of guilt and fear that he will do something horrible if she leaves. If anything, their relationship is more destructive now, because of the ever-present threat that even worse things will happen if she cheats or leaves him again. It’s a giant sword dangling above the couple.

He has the hands of a hikikomori!

Yoshiro himself has shown no sign of changing or becoming more open or more willing to go to the outside world. When the film had a chance for that to become a plot point, Cat Girl Kiki just didn’t bother. Yoshiro didn’t grow, didn’t change, didn’t do anything except learn that his depression and illness can be used to blackmail Yuka into staying with him when she’s clearly interesting in exploring other options.

That being said, finding the kitten is a ray of hope, if only because having a pet can help lesson depression. Though none of that is addressed in the film at all. What could have been a great statement about mental health and a dark look at relationships instead is just a depressing mess that gets an average score based solely on unused potential and the fun of reading things into it.

Yes…”adopt”…. (Call the cops. Now!)

Rated 5/10 (box, maid, hat, peek, EEEWWWWWWWWW!!!!!!)


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