- Tata the Cat
- Score: 🐱🐱🐱
- Type: Webtoon
- Episodes: 44
- Release date: 2023
- Genres: Drama, Fantasy, Family, Coming of Age
- Cats Spotlight: Tata!
Goyangi Tata
[고양이 타타]
Goyangi Tata is a Korean full-colour webtoon that can also be read for free on the site or app.
To summarize, the plot is about Suyeon, who lives in Seoul but goes to visit her grandma in the countryside during her summer break. There, she found out that a huge flower grew in the tree in the backyard, and when the flower bloomed, a ginger cat came out of it. The cat called Tata belonged to her family around 40 years ago and was buried under that very same tree. Now that Tata had reincarnated from the flower, all of her family members went back to their childhood's home to see it.
Now to unravel each aspect of this webtoon. First, the art: The art is terrible; I wouldn't say that this webtoon has the worst art ever because webtoons are mostly 3D (3D characters painted over and 3D backgrounds), and even when they aren't 3D, the art is generally crap. In Tata the Cat, I couldn't see anything in 3D and the backgrounds/characters aren't the worst, but everyone looks the same! And everyone dresses so similar that it's almost impossible to distinguish them (I could only recognize the granny lol). And to make things worse, there is a bunch of flashbacks that show Suyeon's mom and siblings as kids, and I couldn't tell if it was the present or the past because the only difference between them was a tiny wrinkle in the face of the adults (again, I could only distinguish the dates because of the grandma). It was also difficult to differentiate between the males and females so that's why the art is terrible!
The story: Since the webtoon is short and, as usual, I don't want to ruin the story, I'll give a short, spoiler-free analysis. Tata the Cat deals with interesting concepts like regret, moving on, and how to deal with change while still managing to keep the cat in an important role in the story (in comparison with the stories that I used to read that feature cats but are mostly comedy). And the story mainly revolves around a family (even though Suyeon is the protagonist), which is a good thing because it's really difficult to find a manga/webtoon that focuses on a family instead of a group of teenagers or single adults. I also saw a lot of people comparing it to the Ghibli movies (in the comments section), and I agree that this series has the same charming point as Ghibli's movies, and it also features supernatural elements without getting too fantastical. My only complaint is that the story dwells too much on the "kid moving to another town" trope and that the pacing in the last episodes was too slow (in the last episodes, at least 10–15 episodes happened in a single night).
The cat, Tata, is the main selling point of this webtoon. He is cute and actually behaves like a real-life cat (if you actually live with cats, you'll understand). Even though he is a magical flying cat that was reborn from a flower (and he flies a lot in the series), he is just a normal cat; he doesn't speak or behave like a human, but he expresses himself with his gestures and facial expressions. The only great thing about the art, by the way, is that even if the cats have a simple lineart, they are still normal cats and aren't fully stylized like most anime cats.
Veredict: I think that this webtoon is good, and its good points surpass its flaws. I could recommend it to people who like cats and to people who like heartwarming Ghibli-like stories (the Webtoon site even categorizes it as a heartwarming story too).