While discussing the misunderstanding that has transpired, Haru is catnapped by the King’s subjects and is forcibly transported to the Cat Kingdom. Later, she will encounter Muta, who leads her to the Baron. Haru, probably too drowsy to fully comprehend what is going on, gives a non-committal response to the Cat King’s proposal to arrange her marriage to Prince Lune, and this is interpreted by the Cat King as an acceptance. The Cat King offers Haru gifts of dead mice and catnip for saving his son’s (Prince Lune) life. The night after saving a cat from an oncoming truck, she is visited by a royal procession of cats who are mostly standing upright. Haru Yoshioka is a quiet schoolgirl who sits in the second-to-last row near the oblong window in her classroom – she is obviously our protagonist for this anime. The two holdovers from Whisper of the Heart are two cats named Muta and the Baron (who only becomes animate in Whisper during a fantasy sequence). So began production on The Cat Returns, directed by Hiroyuki Morita, and a spin-off (not an official sequel) of Whisper of the Heart that concentrates on the adventures a schoolgirl who can talk to cats.

One project included an offer from a Japanese amusement park to have Ghibli create a twenty-minute short film on cats.

But Kondo’s unexpected death in 1998 lengthened the careers of Miyazaki and Takahata, as well as forcing fellow Ghibli co-founder and producer Toshio Suzuki to find others within the studio who could helm future projects. That film’s director, Yoshifumi Kondo, seemed to be the heir apparent. When Whisper of the Heart appeared in Japanese theaters in 1995, Studio Ghibli proved in the middle of its most productive period that somebody within the studio other than Hayao Miyazaki or Isao Takahata could direct a successful film.

Movies like the cat returns