I interviewed Kenji Ishimaru about If You See a Cat on Tuesday, September 2, 2025 at Venice Immersive in Venice, Italy.
Here is the story synopsis for If You See a Cat:
- “The boy’s only friend was a hallucination of his beloved cat. Concerned for his mental health, his mother admitted him to a psychiatric hospital. After three months of medication-based treatment, the hallucinations fade, and he is discharged — but he has lost his emotional anchor and appears even more lifeless than before. Withdrawing into himself, he shuts his mind to the world and isolates in his room. One day, from his window, he sees a girl playing with a stray cat in the parking lot. This quiet moment becomes the catalyst for his recovering.”
Here are the contextual domains that are explored:
- Mental Health in Japan [6] & within various professional medical contexts with doctors [6]. Overall feelings of exile [12] Main scenes take place at home [4], within the context of a local Japense neighborhoods [3], as well as the hospital [6]. Episode triggered by the death [8] of his cat [6]. You watch the experience through the eyes of these cats [6], often low-level to the ground looking up.
Here is the Elemental Center of Gravity:
1st Center of Gravity of Emotional Presence: Narrative-driven, immersive animation. |
2nd Center of Gravity of Earth Element / Environmental and Embodied Presence: Into these different worlds, and often from the perspective of the cat – to get some distance over the dehumanization depicted by the Japanese medical establishment.. Some spatial metaphors of illusions |
3rd Center of Gravity of Air Element / Mental and Social Presence: Dialogue amongst the characters – English and no subtitles |
4th Center of Gravity of Fire Element / Active Presence: No narrative agency or any embodied Interactions |
Archetypal Themes and Character Explored:
- The Fragility of Mental Health. The oppression from insitutionalization + transgression of boundaries of Human Rights & violations of dignity. Also withdrawling from society and feelings of exile and grieving death and then starting to see Hallucinations. Empathizing with the types of taboos against mental health within the context of Japan – TITLE: If you see a cat, trying to connect to mundane realities of pets we all have. Universal experiences of the death and loss of pets, but also how mental health issues may also ripple out and impact you or people close to you
Artist Statement:
- “Fortunately, I have never experienced mental illness. In depicting the boy who is at the mercy of his surroundings — including being labelled as mentally ill — I portrayed him as a kind of outsider. But I was always aware that I myself could be in the same position tomorrow.”
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Music: Fatality
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