Shinkai Makoto's 'She and Her Cat' and the Magic of Prologue

I have always been fascinated by Shinkai Makoto's earlier work She and Her Cat (彼女と彼女の猫) without quite being able to put into words as to why. Lately, I recalled something I read somewhere from Natsume Soseki that may explain it.

Natsume was writing about a personal experience where he was present at a classical concert. The orchestra was tuning the instruments as usual, and a Japanese lady, not knowing that it was just tuning, remarked afterwards that music at the beginning was wonderful, perhaps the best she has heard the whole evening.

When I read this anecdote for the first time, I actually could not help but agree with the Japanese lady. There is something provocative about the tuning part at the beginning of a concert - perhaps the premonition about what is to come - that excites one in a way that the actual performance does not. The tuning is suggestive, imperfect and impromptu - no one would think of recording the tuning at the beginning of a concert, and yet there is a kind of beauty in it in the sense that the tuning embodies the mood of anticipation of the evening.

To come back to She and Her Cat - the whole anime short feels like a prelude to something. There are descriptive passages about the weather etc which one would have thought were a set-up to a real story with characters, a plot,  various conflicts and their resolution etc. But the plot and the conflicts never came. We never learn the cat owner's sorrow. We never even see her face. One feels as though one is shown the beginning of something, but it ends before that something comes. And yet the effect is magnificent. There is a kind of magic in this anime short in that a story is suggested rather than told outright.

In a retrospect, one may also say that She and Her Cat is a prelude to Shinkai's career - in which recurring themes such as distance and separation are outlined. (His films are always about distance and separation one way or other.) But that is just wisdom after the fact.