Character · The Cat Returns
Baron Humbert von Gikkingen
A cat statue in a top hat, cravat and waistcoat, who has now turned up in two separate Ghibli films.
In Otakana the clue reads: Cat figurine in a top hat and cravat
- Type
- Character
- Series
- The Cat Returns
- Letters
- 5 · Hard
Baron Humbert von Gikkingen first appeared in Whisper of the Heart in 1995, as a figurine in an antique shop and the subject of the story a teenage girl is trying to write. The Cat Returns grew out of that invented story and became its own film in 2002, directed by Hiroyuki Morita, which makes the Baron a character invented inside a fiction and then promoted out of it.
In his own film he runs the Cat Bureau, a small office reached through a back street most people cannot see, and he helps Haru after she saves a cat and is rewarded with an engagement to the Cat Prince. He is unfailingly courteous, fights with a cane, and treats a kidnapping in another kingdom as primarily a question of good manners.
The Cat Returns is the lightest thing Ghibli released in that stretch: seventy five minutes, no message to speak of, and a house cat the size of a beanbag doing most of the complaining. It came from a manga Aoi Hiiragi drew after Whisper of the Heart, and it remains the studio's most cheerful hour and a bit.
Spelling BARON
BARON is the whole answer, since Humbert von Gikkingen is a joke rather than a usable row. Five letters, an ordinary English word, and the Japanese バロン borrows it back unchanged. The thing to hold on to is that his title is his name here. Nobody in either film calls him anything else, and the game follows their lead.