neko's thinkbox

????

Made a pot of tea about one hour and a half ago, and I haven’t drunk one sip of it while watching episodes 3-6 of Nyan Koi! just now. So I shall try and find a reason why I forgot to drink my tea.

The thought of writing this post in Lolcat^[1][2] occurred to me often, but I just am not that well-versed in that Kitty pidgin. Would have been quite appropriate to Nyan Koi, but then again, only if this anime had been only about purring furballs. Which it isn’t.

The first episode was very interesting to me, showing me an interesting premise of this male lead, Kousaka Junpei, smitten by a curse that, while it enables him to understand cat speech, will turn him into a cat if he doesn’t help 100 cats before an unknown deadline. And he’s allergic to cats. This in combination with him having a crush on his classmate Mizuno Kaede, who loves cats, it promised to become very interesting indeed. Like, Junpei trying to get closer to Kaede, while trying to hide his secret from her, allowing for interesting situations, developments etc… but of course, that would have been too boring to the average idiot who expected moé catgirlsBlatant Tokyo Mew Mew reference. and nippy amounts of nyanservice. Who cares about kitty cats? Get a girl! Preferably, half a dozen of them, of varying age, character and breast size!

ちょっｗｗｗおまｗｗｗ・・・　これｗばかじゃねぇのｗ

ちょっｗｗｗおまｗｗｗ・・・　これｗばかじゃねぇのｗ

The second episode introduced a second girl, Kanako. Her initial ganguro appearance was monumentally ugly, and she seemed like an average delinquent; but she ended up being, let’s say, quite average and nice. She’s quite simple and stupid though.
Third episode, third girl: Chizuru. Older girl (would be an aberration to call her a woman, though she technically is), has a ton of loose screws, but she’s so frank and unromantic, I like that. …that’s about it.
Fourth episode, yes, another girl: Nagi. The reason why she’s been mistaken for a guy really is puzzling- but hey, she’s cool. Not. Apart from her nice bodily features, her personality is as shallow as a dried out river.
Fifth episode, you know the drill, there’s yet another girl at the very end of the episode, which culminates into the completion of the harem in ep 6: cue Akari and Kotone, twin-tailed twin lolis with conflicting personalities – why hello there, Sara and Soujyu! Make it 6 girls, so far. Well, could be worse.

This anime was fast using up its 9 lives, and desperately needed more cats to save it from disaster. Disappointingly however, this anime made more and more detours into fanservice & stereotype land to borrow comical and visually attractive elements. Episode 4 was horrible in this aspect: groping boobs, steamy bath scenes; innocent daughter of yakuza family, ultra-tomboyish girl everyone mistakes for a boy, has an underlying inferiority complex, bi-sexual, falls in love with the protagonist once he finds out she’s a girl and cheers her up, etc. Been there, seen that.
It led up to episode 5 which wasn’t any better. Amusement park owned by yakuzas screams romance and slapstick, added to a ridiculous matchmaking theme (“become her gf tonight or marry me!“) in a love polygon-in-progress setup, ghost house, culminating at the top of the ferris wheel… Smelt of filleristic genericalness.

I saw this one coming. And I laughed like a madcat. Poor Kaede ;ω;

I saw this one coming. And I laughed like a madcat. Poor Kaede ;ω;

But! The fact that Kana told Kanae a hint about Junpei’s crush did give the episode a twist of shyness, which I found awesome. Given the usual ridiculous tangents romance comedies tend to segue into, it was unexpected to see such a realistic event instead of an embarrassing misunderstanding. And the episode was almost saved by the last 30 seconds, finally returning to the plot.
Nevertheless, as I expected it to be better – and story-wise, it did a little – episode 6 sadly ventured into zettai ryouiki and pantsu territory, although you might not have seen the pantsu through the abyssal darkness emerging from under the lolis’ mini-skirts.
But that’s fine. Fine as in, “I can ignore that, because the story is more captivating.”

Despite my averseness to harem anime, the direction taken isn’t a bad one. Pretty early, Chizuru dropped out as a contestant, as well as Nagi (who only serves to justify the presence of the Yakuza.) Kanako seems to recognize Junpei’s preference for Kaede too, which only leaves us with the loli twins, whom I believe (or hope) won’t cause too much trouble either. We also know Kaede is aware of our male lead’s crush on her, and they are getting closer by the episode.
So basically, everyone else is now roughly supporting these two (hopefully shifting the focus away from the harem category), which means we’re actually back to my assumed premise: romance between Junpei and Kaede, and him fulfilling his cat-licious missions while trying to prevent her from discovering the curse.
In this context, I could imagine that the next episodes will most likely create critical situations where Kaede will come closer to the secret, and I am quite looking forward to that.

I haven't seen such fighting dust-clouds for ages!

I haven’t seen such fighting dust-clouds for ages!

In the end, this anime (and not my poor short-term memory) made me forget about my tea after all. I guess I should give this anime more credit. We’ll see how this one goes.

1. in which a translation of the Bible will appear sometime soon [↩]
2. See also http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lolcat for more info [↩]