Hi, I'm Michael. What's Michael? The animated series of 1988
What's Michael? (Japanese original title: ホ ワ ッ ツ マ イ ケ ル? Howattsu Maikeru?) is a Japanese manga series created by Makoto Kobayashi. In 1984 it began its serialization in the Weekly Morning magazine. The manga chronicles the adventures of Michael, an orange American Shorthair tabby cat, his feline friends and other pets in a series of fun episodes. Michael is not a specific cat, but rather a feline version of the ordinary man as he has appeared in drastically different settings in the chapters: he is a normal cat in some chapters (with different owners in different episodes), an anthropomorphic cat in others and even dies in some chapters.
Dark Horse Comics published the series in the United States as eleven volumes between 1997 and 2006 and in 2020 published the first volume of a "Fatcat Collection", which included the first six volumes. The manga was presented in the standard American left-to-right reading format.
In 1986, what is Michael? received the Kodansha Manga Award for general manga.
The manga was adapted into two OVA anime films in 1985 and 1988 and into a 45-episode TV series in 1988-1989 which in Italy was titled Hi I'm Michael and broadcast on Italia 1 in 1989.
History
Most of the episodes in the series fall into one of two story types. The first portrays cats in a realistic way, living a normal life with their owners. Funny situations arise in the way humans observe the naturally bizarre behavior of their pets. The second type of story is of a purely fantastic type where all the animals are attributed anthropomorphic characteristics such as walking on two legs, wearing clothes and being able to talk to each other; these episodes place the animals in a cliché storyline and mix their human characters with normal animal behavior. In these stories, however, the animals do not completely lose their instincts, creating very funny situations.
Characters
Michael
Mr. Kobayashi
Teresa
Oliviero
Comma
Caterina
Technical data
Manga
Author Makoto Kobayashi
Published by Kodansha
English publisher Dark Horse Comics
Magazine Weekly Morning
Exit date 1984 – 1989
Volumes 9
OVA (Original video animation)
Kitty Film Studio
Exit date from the 25 November 1985 to the 25 July 1988
Duration 55 - 60 minutes
Episodes 2
Anime television series
Title: Hi, I'm Michael
Regia Masakazu Higuchi
Character design Yoshio Kabashima
Artistic direction Katsuyoshi Kanemura
Studio Damme
Network TV Tokyo
Date 1st TV April 15, 1988 - March 28, 1989
Episodes 45 (complete)
Relationship 4:3
Episode duration 22 min
Italian network Italy 1, Junior TV
Date 1st Italian TV 1989
