Nekopara

Winter 2020 has been a pretty dismal season for anime overall. Eizouken will of course run away with anime of the season because it had exactly ZERO competition that could stop it. It doesn’t matter how boring, self-indulgent, or repetitive it is. Yuasa directed it and Eizouken has a budget, so compared to the rest of the Spring 2020 lineup it’s like watching Canelo Alvarez fight a bunch of children. My personal anime of the season is Interspecies Reviewers, but I can’t review that for a few more days. Instead, let’s look at a series that apparently met Funimation’s high moral standards. This is the bizarre dumpster fire known as Nekopara.

So what the fuck is a Nekopara? Well you see, Nekopara is a shitty H-game from 2014. For the first 2 years, absolutely no one gave a fuck, but then in 2016-2017 it became a popular gag gift on Steam. A shitty game that’s really cheap, so you buy it during a steam sale and gift it to your friend as a joke, knowing that they will probably never play it. Yet SOMEHOW, this piece of shit got an anime adaptation. Why didn’t Big Rigs get an anime adaptation? Why didn’t Bad Rats get an anime adaptation?

So why complain about Nekopara? It’s just porn after all! Just shut the hell up and enjoy the cat boobs and literal pussy! You can’t, because the anime removed all the H content and decided to bank on the strong plot and characters. You read that right. This is a game where humanoid cat girls are sent via post to some chef and must help out in his restaurant. In the game he of course bangs these girls, despite the fact they’re only 4 years old and have the minds of children. In the anime, they just kind of hang out and do…nothing. There are tons of slice of life shows where basically nothing happens, but Nekopara sets a new low bar. Since the anime isn’t a porn, I end up having to think about the stuff the writer didn’t want people to think about. Where did these catgirls come from? What is the history of Mankind’s interaction with this species? They seem to have roughly human intelligence and can speak Japanese fluently, but they count as pets and legally as property. It’s not all bad being a cat slave though. The girls get a pretty bell necklace when they learn not to run away. Can’t have your harem of catgirls getting Drapetomania!

Did I mention this series got over 1 million dollars via crowdfunding? How is that even possible? I can only assume that some basement dweller used his bitcoin wealth that he collected playing Warcraft 10 years ago. I know I bang on about this in too many reviews, but half of Spice and Wolf and over half of Baccano were never adapted! There are SO many good anime that need another season, but Nekopara is what makes its crowdfunding goals and gets made. Also fuck Funimation for picking this up, dubbing it, and distributing this instead of Reviewers. Gen Fukunaga should be tied to a bed and forced to spend a passionate evening with Elza the hyena girl!

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Wow, I can’t believe that the anime of the decade has come out so soon!!!

I never thought in my wildest dreams that frickin Nekopara of all things, a bare bones visual novel featuring sex scenes with incredibly well animated cat girls named after foods, would ever get an anime. But thanks to the wallets of an agglomeration of weebs of culture who were somehow able to raise over 1 million dollars for this anime’s creation, Nekopara the anime was conceived. And that my friends is why this is the anime of the decade, because it represents the dedication and perseverance of countless anime and visual novel fans out there. It truly brings a tear to the eye…*sniff*…I’m so proud of this degenerate community! Maybe next time they'll even consider using their cash on actual real life women!

Oh wait, was I supposed to actually talk about the anime itself? Uh…it’s basically the most simplistic slice of life you’ll ever come across. They introduce a new catgirl character that the main girls look after, and…yeah, not much of anything really happens to be completely honest. But hey, this anime features cute catgirls doing cute catgirl things, so it OBVIOUSLY gets an automatic “10/10 would fap to catgirls again” from me!

Now despite everything, Nekopara could have actually been even better believe it or not. While Nekopara has everything that a Noble man could ever want, there are in fact two ways that this anime could have actually transcended perfection.

1. If it featured sex scenes for the viewing pleasure of degenerates like myself.
2. The cat girls were actually real and living with me in my home.

But of course, there’s always the visual novel to fulfill #1 and Elon Musk to genetically engineer the cat girls for #2, so basically, all is right in the world and Nekopara is one of the most significant and enlightening creations of the century.

This review hurts me on a metaphysical level because of how short, simplistic, sarcastic, and childish it sounds. But hey, that’s kinda exactly like Nekopara itself, so I guess it fits!

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Music and art both are top notch. That's why we had our hopes high. But with every new episode it became more and more clear — Nekopara is hot garbage.

Each catgirl gets one comic gag assigned in the beginning of the season, and then writers exploit it repeatedly in almost every episode. Including bringing character up just for a few seconds to show yet another version of the same joke they made in ep1.

While each episode has an interesting idea — Cinnamon exploring her breeding desires or Cacao looking for new owners, every single one of them fails both to develop said characters or move the story. In fact it doesn't move even an inch forward.

There's no progression in any way. That's why you can't compare Nekopara to any decent slice-of-life where the overall story still moves: be it school year, visible career changes or something else.

If this show were an isekai, it would be "In Another World with My Smartphone". Just appalling in how big of a failure this is.

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Nekopara is a fun and cozy way to spend 24 minutes. Simply put, it’s a very relaxing show with extreme amounts of literal and figurative fluff.

Ironically, in contrast to its hentai origins, Nekopara is one of the most wholesome shows I’ve seen. Narratively, there’s not much on the way of plot in this show. It’s very much a “monster” of the week type thing with each episode providing a new challenge or event for the girls to prepare for. These will usually be 90 percent fluff and 10 percent fan service.

If you’re looking for a fun and relaxing way to deal with the current uncertain times and pass time, enjoy CGDCT or cat girls, this is your show. Don’t expect anything groundbreaking or revolutionary, but you will certainly get a laid back and cozy ride.

Technically, there’s not much to speak of. This isn’t a battle shonen so there’s no real need for high quality animation. The art, however is extremely well done making the show nice and bright. This adds to that cute feel of the show.

In conclusion, Nekopara despite being no masterpiece, was one of my favourite shows of the season and helped me to wind down at the end of the week after class. It was a consistent and fun ride throughout and I look forward to future content.

Nekopara gets 8 Nya’s out of 10.

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