A Whisker Away

Miyo Sasaki is a middle school girl who has crush on her classmate, Kento Hinode. Each day at school, she goes out of her way to interact with him and make romantic advances, in spite of Hinode's cold attitude and repeated rejections.

Each evening after school, Miyo goes home and dons a magical Noh mask which transforms her into the cat, Tarō. As Tarō, Miyo spends time with Hinode, keeping him company while he studies Pottery and listening to his problems. She longs to confess that the cat that he loves and the girl that he hates are the same person, but is afraid that he will reject her and refuse to visit with Tarō anymore.

One day, Miyo overhears a pair of boys at school speaking ill of Hinode, and loudly intervenes to defend his honor. She injures herself during the altercation, and for the first time, Hinode shows warmth to her as he takes her to the nurse's office and share his lunch with her. Later that evening as Tarō, Miyo learns that Hinode's family is closing their pottery shop, as his grandfather is retiring and the family can no longer afford it. Hinode's kindness towards her, combined with a need to cheer him up at the loss of his hobby inspires Miyo to confess her love in the form of a letter.

The next day in class, Miyo's letter is snatched from her hands by a bully as she attempts to deliver it to Hinode. The bully reads the letter aloud, embarrassing both Miyo and Hinode. When confronted, Hinode saves face by publicly telling Miyo that he hates her.

Miyo later visits Hinode as Tarō and spends the night with him. In the morning, she decides that life with Hinode as a cat is better than life without him as a human, and her human face falls off in the form of a porcelain mask. The shopkeeper which sold Miyo the enchanted cat mask then appears and collects Miyo's face, saying that he will give it to a cat who wants to be human, and promising to take Miyo to a special place when her cat transformation becomes permanent.

Now missing, Miyo's friends and family begin searching for her, including Hinode, who confesses to Tarō that he doesn't really hate Miyo. Meanwhile, Kinako, the cat of Miyo's stepmom, appears in Miyo's body, having purchased Miyo's mask from the shopkeeper. Miyo implores Kinako to return her face, but Kinako refuses stating that she is approaching the end of her lifespan and wishes to continue living and bringing happiness to Miyo's stepmom. But not before telling her about a red line cats see. The people around "Miyo" notice that something is off about her.

Miyo follows the shopkeeper to the secret Island of Cats where she hopes to convince him to turn her back into a human. Meanwhile, Kinako comes to understand just how much Miyo's stepmom loved her cat and has a change of heart, wanting to return to her original body. She went over to Hinode's to confront him and reveals the secret of the masks to him and takes him to the Island of cats in order to save Miyo before she is turned into a cat permanently. However as he was fully human, he could not see cat island so while there, Kinoko gives Hinode a cat masks which turns him into half cat.

Kinoko and Hinode were trapped by the masked seller but were rescued by Miyo and another cat who was a human. When Kinoko was about to give her her face back, the mask stealer takes Miyo.

While Hinode eventually finds Miyo, the shopkeeper takes them to the place and attempts to finalize Miyo's and Hinode's transformation and extract their lifespan, but is foiled by all of the resentful humans that he had previously turned into cats. Miyo and Hinode confess their love to each other as Kinako returns Miyo's face. They return to the world of humans, Hinode and Miyo return to normal and confess their feelings.

In the credits, it shows Miyo telling her friends about how Hinode loves her, Hinode telling his parents he wants to do pottery, and Hinode doing Miyo's signature "Hinode sunrise attack".

The film was originally scheduled for release in Japanese theaters on June 5, 2020, but it was pulled from the schedule due to the COVID-19 pandemic.[4] The film was then sold to Netflix who released it digitally on June 18, 2020.[5]

• Official website (in Japanese)
• A Whisker Away on Netflix
• A Whisker Away (film) at Anime News Network's encyclopedia
• A Whisker Away on IMDb