Game OVA Season 4: Episode 2 — What's Michael?

I've been looking for something to help me through the hot 'n' humid summer months and what better way to beat the heat than to stay indoors watching questionable anime and playing questionable games based on said anime? For a rundown of this little project, check out the first episode.

The Property

What's Michael? occupies what has proven to be a very popular niche irrespective of whichever part of the world you're from: a comic strip that observes the typically solipsist psychopathy of Felis catus for the subtle amusement of those who decided to get a pet that never returns their affection except when they are hungry or feels threatened by a potentially cuter animal. Written by Makoto Kobayashi and serialized in Weekly Morning magazine, the gentle if occasionally surreal humor of the What's Michael? manga was deemed universal enough to see a few American translations over the years, including a run with Eclipse Comics and later Dark Horse. Running from the mid-'80s to the end of that decade, What's Michael? was also blessed with a couple of OVAs followed by a 45-episode TV show. It also saw a few video game tie-ins, which I guess is obvious enough if I'm covering it here. (Far as I know they never actually explain what's Michael, but I believe he's a cat.)

While What's Michael? traditionally treats its titular creature as a regular house tomcat with distressingly visible balls that mostly communicates with noises and smells like the rest of its kin, there are the occasional "flights of fancy" strips that imagine the cat world as one where they walk around on two legs having meaningful conversations while fully clothed (and not just in the usual sense of Etsy knitted sweaters that say "Infant Human Substitute", whether that's actually written on them or not). I'm not sure the strip ever gets as erudite as Achewood or anything but it does offer something a little atypical in the four-panel animal antics genre if, I suppose, the mangaka had temporarily run out of jokes about how cats love knocking shit off your shelves or secretly pooping in your wardrobe.

Full disclosure, I had a tooth extracted on Monday and I've been on some substantial "ouchie-go-bye-bye"s (actually just two paracetamol, but play along with the bit here) ever since. Since I wasn't about to take on anything too difficult or mentally taxing, which is already pretty rare for Game OVA I'll admit, I figured the misadventures of Japan's second favorite orange cat—they just go crazy for Heathcliff over there—is going to be a real softball/yarnball that I could just about follow in a haze of narcotics and the sort of abject pain that has you curse your own existence as a being that has sufficiently evolved enough to have a central nervous system. At least protozoans don't have dentist bills.

Oh right, the anime. Let's get to it.

The Anime

What's Michael? had a 45 episode run on TV as previously stated but prior to that were a couple of hour-long OVAs, the first of which we're going to be exploring here. Both OVAs were produced by Kitty Films (an open goal for their marketing division) while the first specifically was directed by Makoko Nagao and written by Shigeru Yanagawa. Kitty Films was best known for their collaborations with the famous female mangaka Rumiko Takahashi, first with her persistent alien paramour comedy Urusei Yatsura, then followed by her slice-of-life boarding house dramedy Maison Ikkoku and the kung-fu pseudo-transgender hi-jinks of Ranma½, albeit all through intermediaries (Studio Pierrot, Studio Deen, and Madhouse for the most part). They made or commissioned a few more shows—including working on American-Franco-Japanese co-production The Adventures of T-Rex, about a group of bipedal dinosaurs who fought crime as vaguely cyborg heroes at night but were vaudeville musicians by day (or presumably earlier the same night)—but the company collapsed in the mid-'90s due to persistent money issues, handing off most of their licenses to folks like Pony Canyon.

Nagao had previously directed various episodes of TV including, just as a smattering of examples most relevant to this feature, the game tie-in F-Zero: Falcon Densetsu and the TV show adaptation of previous Game OVA subject Area 88. One of his most recent gigs was key animation for a few The Apothecary Diaries episodes that only just aired (in June '25). Shigeru Yanagawa is similarly another veteran scriptwriter with credits that include future potential Game OVA candidates Bomberman B-Daman, High School! Kimengumi, Genji Tsuushin Agedama, Blue Blink, and... uh, that F-Zero Falcon Densetsu show again. (Is that the one where he Falcon Punches a dude across dimensions? I might have to pencil it in for that reverse Game OVA season I've been threatening to do.)

Anyway, this thing's only 55 minutes long, came out in 1985 (happy 40th!), was uploaded in its entirety on YouTube, and is mostly a series of disconnected named vignettes about how darn wacky those cats can be that I'll be tackling in sequential order. I guess we'll soon get to find out what the Japanese equivalent of lasagna is (okonomiyaki?). Getsuyoubi ga daikirai!

The Terrifying Visitor: Michael is scared by a sudden interloper in his home that resembles his male owner but for his mask of a certain famous kaiju that the skittish cat assumes is some kind of half-man, half-lizard monster person. The truth of the matter is revealed pretty quickly, however: This whole vignette is actually a promotional campaign for Kaiju No. 8 and its shapeshifting kaiju-man protagonist, at the time due to be released a mere 35 years later, hence why they needed to get started on an awareness campaign in this random cat movie. Mystery solved.

Michael's Secrets: Michael meets a swarthy gentleman in a white suit riding a cat-adorned truck who decides, presumably because he's well ahead of any deadlines, to get out and mess around with Michael for a while as a "what do cats like and dislike?" showcase. Turns out cats: like being offered a finger to sniff (knew that), hate sniffing toothpase (okay, not a mint fan), like feather toys (check), hate oranges (but it's an orange cat...?), like cat food (no shit), hate tobacco smoke being blown in their face (does anyone not?), will destroy a Japanese sliding door if given the chance (why did the dude have this in his truck?), hate a glass sliding door for not being as kind to its claws (and the noise I guess), like crawling under kotatsu (the warm table things), hate farts under the kotatsu. After dutch ovening a random cat and hitting whatever quota he was aiming for, the dude then drives off abandoning the ripe kotatsu. I might not say this segment was particularly educational but I suppose they were aiming for a sort of "the frogurt is also cursed" routine.

Skinship: Wasn't quite ready for the movie to get this perverse this quick, but after starting us off with some sex jazz we find out some guy, a different male owner from the first skit, is hoping to have Michael hang out with him under the kotatsu—I'm going to see if this is a throughline or not—but Michael's not feeling it. That's... kind of the whole skit. The owner's shown to have cat foot slippers and a tail at one point so I'm disinclined to dig any further into what's happening here.

???: This next skit doesn't have a name (it's likely an extension of the previous) but opens on a Kenshiro-looking dude using a stick to play fetch with his dog, Rocky. Guessing he's a southpaw. Unnamed Male Owner (who I'll call UMO) gets jealous and decides to try the same thing with Michael, despite Michael being a cat and thus having no interest in anything he cannot eat, destroy, or have sex with. I can tell you, dear readers, Michael does not go for the stick. UMO fetches his own stick, comes back, carefully explains what is required of Michael for this particular mission, then throws the stick again. Michael's expression tacitly hints at the amount of fucks he presently gives about this stick, which is hovering around zero. Sensing his reluctance, UMO switches to going on a run with Michael, but he's not budging for that either. UMO then hits Michael, which I guess you could do in the '80s, and decides to run on his own but Michael "can join in if he wishes". Michael does not. This all tracks so far with what I understand about cat ownership.

One Day With Michael: Here, Michael's hunting a mouse. However, he fails to catch it and, pretending he's not at all bothered by this, starts batting around a stone to convince anyone watching that this was the goal all along. He then repeats this process with a bird only this time he does a traditional Kabuki dance to mask his disappointment in letting it escape. This is the first hint so far that Michael is perhaps no ordinary cat, at least not if it gets in the way of a punchline.

Kayoko: Kayoko is a girl of indeterminate age with crazy staring eyes who is introduced as Michael's nemesis, as evinced by how she starts messing with him as he's trying to sleep. Not with petting or anything normal like that but more in the way of trying to pull his mouth open or pinch his nose while he's trying to breathe. She then sticks her finger in his mouth when he yawns (and gets an epic side-eye in response) then tries to grab his tongue when he yawns again. I should also point out here that she has yet to change her expression or even blink. Real serial killer vibes from this chick already. Is there a word for when someone's a yandere towards a cat? Oh, a nyandere. I guess I answered my own question. Michael runs away as Kayoko stares dead-eyed at the camera like it was the final shot of Psycho. "Michael's greatest enemy was a human child." Benefit of the doubt about the "human" part.

???: Apropos of nothing, the mood suddenly turns romantic as we see two lovers rushing to meet each other on the beach. Staring into each others' eyes for a moment, they reach for an embrace. Wordlessly, the woman then grabs the man and turns him around to drop him in a suplex. There are no cats in this scene.

Michael's First Time: Oh boy. Michael's in heat (or the tomcat equivalent, which is just being noisier than usual) and his married owners (dare ga?) are reluctant to neuter him, so they instead decide to get a female cat so they can have a kitty wedding or something. As the owners bring in his new companion, Michael quickly cycles between several lascivious expressions that all turned my stomach a little, only to discover to his horror that the new cat Popo-chan is... a kitten. Like a third of his size. Friends, I am dying to skip past this to get to the next skit but I suppose my hands are tied here. Michael... goes for it anyway(!!) but is quickly chastized by his owners and forced to be patient as Popo gradually grows up– can I really not skip past this one? A scene has the confused baby Popo trying to suckle Michael's teat and I'm still in a lot of pain from the surgery over here. I know they're animals, but I don't think I need to see a cat pre-ordering another cat.

???: Another short non-cat filler, this sees the same star-crossed couple from the previous beach scene (their names are Pierre and Françoise, turns out) as Françoise is dramatically forced to abandon her partner despite their mutual love. Chasing her into an alley (oh man) he tries to stop her by first throwing a trash can at her and then running her down with a motorcycle, only for her to lariat him off it like a Final Fight goon. I suspect these two will continue be a recurring thing moving forward, regardless of any theatrical "fin" chyrons it puts up. (Nope.)

Soppo!, P.J.: This can only be described as a What's Michael? themed music video, as Michael is spirited away to the cosmos by a magic alien CD while a live-action singer (P.J., I'd assume) croons about Michael's "sexy voice". I believe this same track is used for the TV show's OP as well, so they're getting plenty of mileage out of it. Man, this is like when comedy variety shows were required to have a musical number partway through to break up the jokes—The Simpsons did a parody about it, like they do with most things, but I distinctly recall this format from watching an old Groovy Goolies VHS going way back (talk about your '70s brainrot). Anyway, back to this '80s brainrot. I dunno, I've included the song here if you want to check it out: it's a bit like the Ghostbusters theme, in that it's oddly sexual despite it having absolutely nothing to do with the subject (Ray's ghost BJs aside).

Yakuza Corner: Finally! Let's see what Kiryu Kazuma has to say about all this. This skit's about a powerful and feared Yakuza elite living in a high-end apartment who, despite looking like an ironed out Duke Togo, dotes on his beloved pet cat (Michael; hopefully he didn't kill that couple to steal him) including subscribing to The Cat Handbook magazine and sleeping in the same bed. This was a pretty stylistic skit, suggesting the animators had fun dipping into the archives for some old-fashioned Yakuza movies to riff on. Also, what is this skit trying to say? (Ex-)Yakuza love petting cats.

???: Another micro-vignette, this time of a motorcyclist racing down a mountain road like something out of Super Hang-On. Except he doesn't hang on, instead falls off the cliff, and presumably dies in the resulting explosion. No moral. No cats either.

Cohabitation: A short and sweet skit about Michael and another owner, a bearded gent, as they live in the same home with clearly defined objects and areas for the cat and the human. This includes a scene of the gent entering a bathroom with "for humans" on the door and Michael following him in via a "for cats" cat flap. We're then greeted—gifted, really—with a scene of them both pinching one off simultaneously. Why did I think this OVA was going to be easy to watch?

Michael and the Fly: This one starts with a warning disclaimer that it was produced in monochrome. OK? I guess that music video took a lot out of the budget. (This segment's "theme" also sounds a lot like Super Metroid, curiously, specifically the dun-dun-dun-dun part before the main melody kicks in.) Anyway, this is about how Michael plays with a fly before killing it and then batting around its corpse, only for it to suddenly stop playing dead and try to escape again to no avail. The fact that it has a human head and speaks this whole time is just another layer of the existential horror you've come to expect from What's Michael?. Pre-empted the Goldblum movie by a year though, so kudos for that.

A Love Story: Popo and Michael: Oh no. Long story mercifully short, Popo is an adult cat now and they had lots and lots of babies. Really isn't sitting right. Next skit!

???: Since we're in disquieting territory already, this is a weird short skit of a woman in workout clothes dancing to a song in very slideshow-tier animation which makes me wonder if it isn't parodying something specific like a commercial. A guy in a suit shows up and dances with her while also sexually harassing her (there's even some anime nudity) and I'm starting to think this OVA isn't for kids. You know, despite having Japanese Garfield in it. Could you imagine Jon Arbuckle going around bothering women who clearly aren't interested in him?

The Deposit: Detective Yamamura: The titular detective is hot on the trail of the terrorist bomber organization Z-28, chasing down a lead to their hideout. What he didn't count on was Michael being as loud as possible in the alleyway just out back as he worked up the courage to storm the place, potentially revealing his presence early to the crooks inside. Having finally been roused by Michael tipping over a garbage can, the crook peeks out the window only for the detective to provide the lamest cat impression to throw him off. Miraculously, it works.

Michael's Album: This one starts out cute, as Michael's owner (this is like the eighth one now) looks through a photo album of Michael as he is adopted as a kitty and raised with love by a man and his wife. The last photo shows how happy and content the wife and Michael are, only for the man to put down the album, look across to a much heavier version of his wife and cat, and sigh equally heavily. I am free to interpret the punchline in as many ways as I want but they're all pretty bad.

Nyaajira (Catzilla): A skyscraper-sized cat is attacking downtown Ginza and the JSDF is called in to destroy it. Surprisingly, it isn't Michael but a grumpy-looking calico cat instead. I'll just call him Calicolossus until I'm told otherwise. It toys around with trains and tanks and shrugs off all the firepower used against it, after which it briefly stops in a baseball stadium to take a shit at third base. Michael, a normal-sized cat, happens to spot this fee-fi-fo-feline and uses a magic wand to become Michael Cat, a very not subtle Ultraman parody. The two square each other up, and... Michael chickens out because Calicolossus is just that scary. He also does the same Kabuki dance of failure as before. The crowd of human bystanders boo him, as well they should.

Michael's Escape: In this, Michael's an apartment cat who is tired of having no room to play around in and makes a break for it as soon as his curly-haired owner (man, this cat gets around) opens the door for a moment as he comes home. In the resulting chase around the neighborhood, the owner gets beat up for jumping on some dude's car, hit with objects after inadvertently peeping on a changing girl, and some weirdo jumps on the feather toy he uses to try to entice Michael out of a narrow gap. Michael, meanwhile, is off in a park somewhere causing more trouble. Tired from running around the city, the defeated owner comes back home to find Michael waiting at the door, having had all the fun he needed. This one was kinda cute and its happy ending entirely unearned, given what we've seen this asshole cat get up to.

Baka Mitai, But For Cats: This last skit is another musical number, a nostalgic and melancholy love song about longing for one's lover to come back to them. Except it's about Michael and Popo, the latter having moved away on a train with the female owner (I guess the humans split up too). They didn't go into who got custody of their twenty children but maybe this is a different Michael and Popo. You know, like they're Link and Zelda and just keep getting reincarnated over and over. Either way, I'm just happy he's suffering, you know?

End Credits: I wasn't going to include anything here since it's just the credits but I had to take a screenshot anyway because of the Super Mario Bros. reference. That game would've come out a few months before the movie so I bet everyone thought it was a timely killer goof.

And that's the end of this fever dream of an OVA. A series of skits riffing on silly animal behavior and the pop culture of its time, all tied together (mostly) by a lazy orange cat that likes to fuck. I'll have to watch the second one someday when I'm similarly messed up on painkillers.

Speaking of pain, it turns out someone made a game of What's Michael? and, more importantly, can we get Jeff Gerstmann to play it after he's finished off the rest of the Garfield tie-ins? Let's check it out on his behalf first:

The Game(s)

I only found a couple of games based on What's Michael?, the first of which was a 1988 game released on Japanese home computers the PC88/98 and MSX and was simply named What's Michael?. It's a pure adventure game from what I can tell from its screenshots and, like most Japanese PC games from that era, does not have a fan translation nor do I imagine people are hurrying to make one thereby making it a little too impenetrable for a feature like this. Likewise, there was an untranslated game for the FDS—the Famicom Disk System—released a year earlier. However, that one's actually a simple educational action (or "educactional", emphasis on the "cack") game intended to teach Japanese kids their English letters and words with their favorite cartoon cat, just in case their favorite ornery cartoon sailor who constantly cursed under his breath somehow wasn't an appealing enough eigo no sensei.

So... here it is. Michael English Daibouken ("Michael's Great English Adventure"), released on the FDS in 1987 by a studio called Scorpion Soft whose only other credit was a terrible Tarot fortune-telling app for the same system. Truly, we missed out by not having the FDS become a thing over here. The West just wasn't quite ready for the manic incredulity of Disk-kun, I suppose.

If it wasn't clear from the title, the basic goal here is to teach Michael words in English. You do this by collecting letters as they float from the bottom of the screen to the top, in groups of four where there's only ever one correct option, with the incomplete word at the top of the screen that you're assembling letter by letter. Michael can jump up to and stand on a surprising number of things, given his feline dexterity, so the game encourages you to get off the ground level where the letters suddenly appear and hover somewhere above them higher up where it'll be easier to anticipate them as they float towards you.

There's a group of different environments, each with their own set of related words (e.g. animals and fruit for the farm), and three modes. Each mode also has three difficulty settings, though I'm not sure how the game tracks these. The final challenge is a bit different, as you'll see in the screenshots below. Well, here's hoping it's at least better than GarPhonics and Friends:

Does it do right by the anime? It has an orange cat doing stupid shit in it so I guess it passes the first hurdle on the road to legitimacy. I dunno, I wouldn't have thought What's Michael? was for children given the horrors I just witnessed in the OVA but I hear the TV series itself is much more tame and kid-friendly. Certainly more Milo and Otis than the OVA's Fritz the Cat. If you gotta get your dumbass kids to learn some English and they just keep going on and on about What's Michael?, which is itself a grammatically incorrect statement (if there's no concomitant verb you don't use a contraction, jeez), then I guess you could just plop them down in front of this despite all its typos. I mean, if you hated them.

That's the end of this episode of Game OVA.

This was a mistake.

See you next time.