Nyaight of the Living Cat

In the 21st century, humanity's love for cats grew so deep that nearly everyone owns one as a pet. However, selective breeding of cats results in an extraordinary individual who carries a strange virus. The outbreak—dubbed the Nyandemic—turns any human who makes contact with an infected feline into one themselves.

Kunagi, a man who has lost all of his memories, is forced to flee mid-shift from a cat cafe. With him are siblings who run the place, Gaku and Kaoru, and a customer named Tanishi. But Gaku confesses that he is already infected and pleads with Kunagi to protect his sister. After experiencing the danger firsthand, the remaining three begin searching for a way to survive the very animals they adore.

Despite the government's best efforts to halt the feline hordes, the Nyandemic uncontrollably spreads. Human extinction seems more probable by the hour—but Kunagi, Kaoru, and Tanishi refuse to surrender their humanity without a fight!

[Written by MAL Rewrite]

Kunagi Main

Mizunaka, Masaaki Japanese

Kaoru Main

Ueda, Reina Japanese

Tanishi Main

Yasumoto, Hiroki Japanese

Gaku Main

Takeuchi, Ryouta Japanese

Ward, Masaki Main

Nakajima, Yoshiki Japanese

Tsutsumi Main

Serizawa, Yuu Japanese

Arata Main

Kawashima, Reiji Japanese

Ward, Len Main

Kimura, Subaru Japanese

Mercury, Freddy Supporting

Jones Supporting

Maeda, Aki Producer

Miike, Takashi Director

Kamitani, Tomohiro Director

Nitta, Norio Storyboard

Reviews

Oct 5, 2025

TheCompletionist

Recommended

Do you love cats. I certainly do. I have been a loyal and loving cat owner since I was 24 years old thanks to my wife and from the day that I moved in with her there has never been an occasion where our home has not had a cat in it. I’m also a huge horror film fan so it seems natural that an anime that integrates two major loves of my life would be a winning combination with regards to my love of anime. Well kind of/sort of.

Nyaight of the Living Cat is a parody anime that borrows heavily from multiple ... live action zombie films that are critically acclaimed by horror fans and adds a hilarious twist to the zombie genre. In Nyaight of the Living Cat, a virus is released in the world that turns people into cats, and if a human is unlucky enough to be licked or cuddled by a cat then they turn into a cat themselves and thus the Nyandemic is brought upon this world and it’s up to a bunch of human survivors to try their best to survive the nyandemic despite the fact that the survivors are all cat lovers and it’s very hard for them to resist the urge to show affection to a cat and they even have to deal with the harsh realization that they can’t even bring harm to a cat even as the nyandemic continues to infect more and more people. The best they can do is bring slight discomfort to a cat and even that can be horrible to endure for some of the human characters. The story fixates on a small group of human survivors as they navigate the world through the nyandemic while they try to resist the irresistible charm of what makes cats so loveable.

The key point to take with an anime such as this is that to have any sense of appreciation and enjoyment with regards to this anime is you absolutely need to love cats. If you don’t love cats, then you’re not going to enjoy this anime. It’s going to come across as overly obnoxious when you’re bombarded with cats every step of the way. As a person that has watched many zombie movies, I do appreciate the many references to live action zombie movies and during the ending credits you get cat parody versions of zombie movie posters which add to the charm of this anime.

For someone that loves cats and loves horror, you would figure that this anime would be a home run hit for me personally in some ways it is, but in other ways it isn’t. The biggest weakness of this anime is the human character element, but you really must take the human character element of this anime with a grain of salt because it’s such an obscure premise to begin with. The main characters throughout this anime, Kunagi and Kaoru aren’t the most interesting or engaging characters out there. Both characters are workers at a cat café when the outbreak begins. Kunagi’s over the top reactions when he must fight against the kitty horde aren’t cool or engaging but they’re borderline annoying. To be honest, the side characters are much more entertaining because you get a ton of different characters with all kinds of different abilities to distract or stall the kitty horde such as water, kitty toys, and catnip. Don’t pick your favourite character too quickly because you never really know if they’re going to stick around very long or if they end up turning into a cat.

For those that wonder if there is any animal cruelty in this anime. There is absolutely none, so if you’re a cat lover and you don’t want to see kitties get hurt then you’ll be happy to know that no fictitious kitties are harmed in the making of this anime. It seems so counterintuitive that you’re making a zombie parody except the zombies are cats and you have no way of taking care of the cats permanently which means that throughout the entire anime, the kitty horde continues to increase while the human survivors start to decrease.

The action is serviceable at best, but the biggest problem I have with this anime is pretty much the problem that I have with most zombie films. I want to see as much kitty chaos as possible, especially during the beginning stages of the outbreak. I’ve always been a big fan of the first ten minutes of the dawn of the dead remake from 2004 just because it shows the neighborhood chaos during the very start of the zombie outbreak and I kind of wish we had that in this anime. We see as the outbreak starts to happen in the cat café and then we have a few episodes where the survivors are held up in a grocery store with small tidbits of kitty chaos in the city, but then after that then we have a humorous survival story where the survivors are on a hunt for supplies and they eventually find a fortress to protect them during the nyandemic. That plot is typical in most zombie stories and to be honest it’s kind of been done to death. I want my initial kitty chaos.

The animation is fine for a current anime but it’s not going to blow you out of the water. However, both opening and ending themes are incredibly catchy and if you’re a cat lover you can’t help but meow with the cats during the theme songs.

You really want to watch this anime for all the cute kitty shenanigans. You get to see cats of all different types, shapes and sizes and even though they’re the enemy that the human characters must avoid at all costs – you can’t help but make the aww sound when you see the kitties chasing after human characters and many kitties make repeat appearances throughout this 12-episode adventure.

Ultimately, this anime is an anime for cat lovers. If you don’t love cats, then your mileage out of this anime can vary widely from the audience this anime is aimed for. It’s a nice little parody for those who love cats but for those who love horror because it is a lot of fun to see the many references to horror films that are used in this anime to humorous effect. The anime even takes great care at the very end of the end credits to offer some tips and tricks on how to be a responsible cat owner. Just don’t expect much in the way of closure because by the end of this season – you get more questions than answers – but it just keeps you invested on what to expect out of the next season.

Reviewer’s Rating: 7

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Oct 7, 2025

SomeMage

Mixed Feelings

Just another zombie apocalypse story - but it's cats instead. Ingenious, isn't it? Well, at least the idea was good.

Long story short, this awesome premise of parodying zombie genre with cats was mostly wasted by weak everything else.
They kept the heavy atmosphere that you'd expect from a survival horror, which obviously was getting broken all the time by talk about cute cats, non-lethal methods and generally much lower stakes (becoming a cat isn't THAT bad, is it?). That much is fine, although I felt like parody went in a wrong direction: instead of laughing at the premise, it took itself too seriously. As a result, ... the story wasn't engaging or deep enough, while there was no reasonable comedy either. I often felt simply bored.
One thing that saved it from being a complete disaster, and in a way saved this whole anime for me, was cat trivia. I mean it: it was surprisingly accurate and made good job at showing feelings of cat owners. I'm sure the writer has or had a cat of their own.

Now, who cares about story when you have a solid cast of characters that you love you love to watch? Yeah, no. No such thing here either. I actually have trouble to even write anything about characters, because they were so flat. Like, each one had a one trait that defined them and even that was very superficial. No fun interactions between characters. No waifu or husbando material. No shipping material. Nothing. Their whole role was to comment things that cats did and throw some corny lines at us.
The worst part? Protagonist was being actively annoying at times. His shouting and way of speech, at least for me, was unbearable.
On the bright side, some lines were meme worthy.

So, bad story, weak cast... maybe at least action was good? Nope. Basic animation and art, no noteworthy music. Even cats, the main topic and whole point of this anime, were often made in a low quality CGI. I don't even...

Anyway. I'm going to say it: in my opinion this is actually a bad anime. It failed at everything and wasted the big potential of perfect premise. The only reason I'm rating it so "highly" is because I'm biased, being a cat person myself. It feels like this anime was made for people like me - details about cats resonated with me and I even watched all the trivia segments after credits. Shame that's all there is to it, because it could've been a big hit otherwise.

Reviewer’s Rating: 5

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Oct 13, 2025

patkarunungan

Not Recommended

Funny

'Nyaight of the Living Cat' has a great concept. Unfortunately, I dislike it. Your mileage may vary.


§ Overview

One day, a virus spread that, for some reason, turns people into cats. If a cat is infected, it only needs to touch and lick a person to turn it into a cat.

The remaining humans are trying to fight back, and this includes Kunagi and Kaoru.


... § Notes

1. 'Nyaight of the Living Cat' is a parody of zombie movies. The clue is in the name, a wordplay on the film franchise, 'Night of the Living Dead.'


2. Despite expressing my dislike for it, I would have to commend the producers for coming up with something out of the ordinary.


3. Let's talk about the studio and the staff:


⚫ The studio is OLM, formerly known as Oriental Light & Magic. It's a big studio whose first entry is Wedding Peace. It animates Pokémon and other children's shows. Its recent projects include The Apothecary Diaries, Komi Can't Communicate, Odd Taxi, and Welcome to the Outcast's Restaurant!


⚫ Miike Takashi is the chief director, and I haven't seen his two other works where he served as director.

The other director, Kamitani Tomohiro, served as key animator for Episode 1 of Cheer for You, an anime I didn't like; he was also animation director for the Fruits of Grisaia, whose animation is fairly average.

Overall, the animation is serviceable.


⚫ If there's anything about this anime I can offer high praise, it's the OP and ED as well as the OST.

The OP, 'Cat City' by The Yellow Monkey, offers a catchy rock song with cute lyrics.

The ED, 'Matatabi' by Wanima, is another good rock song. This time, the lyrics are bleak, as is the tone of the song.

Both OP and ED have lyrics that are relevant to the story.

The background musick by Endou Kouji provides the necessary tension.

⚫ The anime's character design by Maki Takao is arguably better than the usual slops. I'm not attached to them, but I can see how they are different to the usual.


4. Let's talk about what I dislike about this.


⚫ I love cats, and watching this is extremely uncomfortable. Again, YMMV. The anime is effective at this horror despite no gore and despite being infused with comedy.


⚫ The narrator interrupts the action with cat trivia. If you're interested in such, you won't mind. But to be honest, scenes feel slower because of that, as I am not that interested in knowing these.


⚫ Another aspect that slows down the pacing is how every human is fawning at how cute the cats are, thereby again slowing the pace of the scenes. It's fine because of the comedy, but if you just want to finish the episode, you might get turned off by these.


⚫ The surviving humans are shown to be battling cats with water guns and other stuff. They are not trying to kill cats but merely stop them.

There are probably a number of reasons why they do these. 1) They love cats, so it would pain them to kill them. 2) These cats were formerly humans. I can imagine them returning to their human form down the road once they reverse-engineer the virus. 3) Perhaps government censorship for gore.

I can't say I dislike this per se, but it makes dealing with cats much more difficult than they already are.


⚫ Much of the episodes show them trying to survive. It's a shame that Season 1 doesn't deal with our characters trying to get to the bottom of this pandemic and how to reverse it.


§ Conclusion

By marking it as 'not recommended,' I'm not saying that you would have a bad time with it. Give it a chance. But as far as I'm concerned, watching this anime is such an ordeal, not because the show sucks, but because of the subject matter — cats as a proxy to zombies.


NOTA BENE: A grade of 3 out of 10 means that I did not enjoy watching this anime despite being either well-regarded or at least popular, or perhaps I happened to rank them below my 4's but above my 2's.

My enjoyment spectrum lies from 4 to 10. If I have scored an anime below 4, I actively dislike it.

Reviewer’s Rating: 3

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