It lowers your heart rate. Eleven stray cats get run out of town for petty theft, shrug, and say they were only hungry, and that single line is the whole moral compass of this movie. Then they hear the rumor about the giant fish and set off anyway, down a stony road where the danger is real but the tone never turns cruel. The pull here is the drawing: soft picture-book shapes, eleven nearly identical cats you somehow start telling apart by how they walk and where they stand in the pile. Nothing about it is trying to impress you, which is exactly why it lands. It is a story about proving you are not useless, told by a gang who never once stops being hungry.

Eleven stray cats cause so much trouble in a small town that they land in hot water, and their only excuse is that they were hungry. When they hear an urban legend about a frightening giant fish, they take it on as a challenge: catch the fish and show the townspeople they are good for something after all. The road ahead is rough and full of danger, and the little band will need courage and confidence to succeed. The film is a fantasy adventure built around this quest.