Categories

Friday, February 10, 2012

Posted by IceCreamNinja in Anime / Manga December 15, 2009 at 03:20:02 AM

Junpei Kousaka is the cat whisperer.

Let’s let that sentence sink in for a second.

Yes, Junpei Kousaka is the cat whisperer. He speaks to cats. He understands cats. He helps cats when they’re in need. Stuck in a tree? Kousaka’s there. Area dog getting you down? I know someone whose got your back. Kousaka’s your best friend if you happen to be small, furry and of the feline persuasion. There’s just one problem. Kousaka’s allergic to cats.

Also, he hates them.

It wasn’t always this way. Before his tragic run-in with the incompetent, pervasive and at times malicious Japanese Urban Planning Department, which in its infinite wisdom decided to among other things place a trash can of equal height directly next to a small shrine dedicated to the protection of the area’s cats, Kousaka was just another average high school student with girl trouble. Yet after his accidental decapitation of the guardian cat deity’s statue via stray soda can, the world as he knew it, his friends, his classes, his home…stayed exactly the same. Except that now it was more annoying because he could understand cat speak.

I watched the first episode of this series a month ago and subsequently spent the next four weeks in a nightmare world of terror and misery; at once dreading the following episodes and at the same time acutely aware that every week I procrastinated, the series grew with each new airing. Admittedly, I did so unfairly, because Nyan Koi! is pretty funny and entertaining in its own right. In my defense though, when the first show ends with a line like “I can’t wait to come over so you can tell me more about cats!” I think you’re justified to retreat onto your couch of solitude, free-base a few bags of M&Ms and try to undo whatever it was that brought you to this point in your life where you find yourself reviewing cat anime.

Nyan Koi! is funny; in its writing, in its voice acting and in its situations and characters. It blends the right amount of subtle humor with over-the-top cat-talking ridiculousness, and in those few times it does arc too far into the dramatic, the cats are there after the credits to poke their own fun at the whole thing. “That second part got really serious, didn’t it?” they ask after an early episode, before proceeding to provide their own interpretation of how the final scenes should have gone with the craziest results possible. The threat that every episode would see as its main story arc Kousaka opening a tuna can or fetching a stranded cat from a tree thankfully never materializes. The setup introduced in the first episode, that of Kousaka’s curse which allows him to understand cats and apparently threatens to slowly turn him into one unless he fulfills the wishes of one hundred different felines, is minimized and used more as a supplement to Kousaka’s everyday schedule. In the end, the various plights and demands of the local cats are simply one more annoyance in Kousaka’s increasingly frustrated life—made all the more complex by the absurd number of girls who manage to fall in love with him every episode.

And that’s where the crux of the humor lies: in Kousaka’s interactions with the many women who inexplicably and at times incredibly randomly enter his life. There’s the first love he pines for, the childhood friend who still carries a flame for him, the mature upper classman daughter of the local Yakuza gang that somehow took notice of him, the twin first years who know about his curse and apparently have some sort of magic ability of their own, the college-aged mailwoman who just randomly bumped into him, and so on. All have their own quirky sort of humor and personality to them, and pretty much all without exception in some way want him to notice them—which makes one wonder why Kousaka has such problems dating in the first place.

I think it’s fairly telling that, although I eventually could tolerate and even with time come to accept that I was watching a series in which a character spoke to cats—cats with varied and fully formed personalities that occasionally spoke in regional dialects, no less—the fact that Kousaka somehow acquired the attentions of six women in as many episodes was the one thing that seemed the most ridiculous. Just what kind of high school is this, first of all, and why didn’t I go there when I was still in school? But more to the point, let’s just take a step back for a second and ask a more important question:

Seriously, Japan? Seriously?

I understand at least in some part why this particular theme appears so often across so many different genres, but really. You’re ruining my suspension of disbelief here with your unrealistic harems of disproportionate women all chasing after that one introverted nerd with a crush on his childhood friend. What is this teaching us? That all one has to do is decapitate a protector deity, take on a supernatural curse that turns you into a high school Dr. Doolittle, have a few one-on-one therapy sessions with cats, and suddenly you’ll just be rolling in women? Were it so easy, Japan. Were it so easy.

Ultimately, Nyan Koi! succeeds on account of the fact that it doesn’t take itself too seriously. It’s funny, silly, entertaining and completely unrealistic. The cat curse serves the series well by giving the show an interesting perspective that acts almost like a sarcastic commentary track that only the protagonist (and audience) can hear. It is possible that with time this may take on a greater focus, such as when Kousaka finishes his one hundred cat task, but in the six episodes I saw, it appeared that the creators were content to use the cats more to poke fun at the more ridiculous problems Kousaka was having with his lady friends than to shove them into the spotlight. Time will tell, of course, but for now it’s enough to get one interested; assuming that that obsessed group of crazed, love-struck women that constantly chases you around gives you enough time to watch it.

You must be logged in to submit a comment.

Recent News

Recent Reviews

Recent Articles