
Critical reception was generally positive. It received a Young Artist Awards nomination for Best Family Motion Picture – Adventure or Cartoon in 1990.

The Adventures of Milo and Otis wasn’t quite as overwhelmingly successful, but the film still did very well. And of course, the money continued to pour in. In 1987, it won Most Popular Film at the Japanese Academy Awards and received a nomination for Best Music Score. Koneko Monogatari‘s star would continue to rise, however. A video game tie-in was released on the Famicon at the same time as the movie, but I don’t think it was as enthusiastically embraced. It was the third highest-grossing film ever in Japan at the time.

Koneko Monogatari was the number one film at the box office in Japan in 1986. “Walk Outside,” the theme song from The Adventures of Milo and Otis Reception It was released in the United States in 1989. Add a new narrator and a new soundtrack, and there you have it: The Adventures of Milo and Otis. Otis also received an expanded role in the Columbia Pictures adaptation. Obviously, the characters were given new, English-language names, and Milo and Otis were born. The result is a sort of rambling coming-of-age tale. Much of the rest was reordered to make the story more appealing for Westerners. Screenwriter Mark Saltzman, known for his work on Sesame Street, wrote a new script that is less whimsical and devoid of poetry interludes. They didn’t simply translate it into English, however. Columbia Pictures took on the project of adapting the film for a North American audience. Koneko Monogatari did very well in Japan, and Hollywood took notice. Koneko Monogatari was released to Japanese audiences in 1986. After the film was edited together to form a story, music, narration, and poetry recitation were added. But there are scenes that could only have been staged. To some extent, the animals were filmed just doing their thing.
MILO THE CAT MOVIE
Hata wrote and directed the movie himself. Koneko Monogatari was filmed over the course of four years. He called it Mutsugoro’s Animal Kingdom, and he wanted to show it all off in a film about his animals. He owns a private island where he had collected over 300 animals of a wide variety of species. The director, Masanori Hata, is an author and zoologist. The Adventures of Milo and Otis was first a Japanese film called Koneko Monogatari, or “A Kitten’s Story”.

Milo and Otis didn’t start out as Milo and Otis, but as Chatran and Poosky. Along the way, they meet animals both friendly and dangerous, grow up, find love, and finally return home together with new families in tow. Otis takes off in pursuit, and so begins the real adventure as the two friends try to find each other and return home. He hides in a box floating in the water, and the box comes unmoored and floats downriver. They have all sorts of adventures, even hatching a chicken egg together, but things take a turn when Milo decides to play hide and seek at the dock. The story begins on the farm where both were born. Milo is fun-loving and danger-prone while Otis is serious and responsible, but the two are best friends. The Adventures of Milo and Otis is a children’s movie about a ginger tabby tomcat named Milo and a tan-and-black pug named Otis.

Koneko Monogatari movie poster – Image from Yahoo Moviesįirst, let’s make sure everybody’s on the same page. This simple and extremely cute movie has a surprisingly complicated story. Of course, no beloved childhood memory goes unruined– The Adventures of Milo and Otis has faced some controversy. I suspect this movie played a big part in my desire for a cat as a young child. It sort of seems like it was always there. I don’t even remember the first time I saw it. When I thought about doing some articles on cats in movies, books, etc., Milo and Otis sprang immediately to mind. “Look, there’s an orange cat named Milo in it, just like yours!” Sometimes you have to wonder about people. The two or three VHS tapes and two DVDs people gave us of the movie over the years never let us forget it. The Adventures of Milo and Otis took on new meaning as I spent 15+ years with a Milo of my own, just as ginger and mischievous as the Milo in the film. All three of his littermates were girls, so there was no Otis, but he and his sister Cara were equally inseparable for their entire lives. And just like the cat in the movie, “Milo was trouble from the very beginning”. He looked just like the kitten in one of my favorite movies, so I named him Milo. He was born under our front porch, the summer before I started kindergarten. Once upon a time, there was a ginger tabby kitten. The Adventure of Milo and Otis movie poster – Image from IMDb
