Hoshi Neko Fullhouse

Hoshi Neko Fullhouse (English: Star Cat Fullhouse) is a 4 episode OVA (Original Video Animation) series made by now defunct Studio Artland, which aired in late 1989. It was made to be a comedy SF set in space.

The story is very simple and in-your-face, it's about a guy named Yaoi Seitarou who's piloting a ship called the Green Goblin and his misadventures in space, that's it. You know this show will be a comedy from the first minutes of episode 1, when the robot Chiraku is telling a fun, somewhat dirty joke. If you laugh at the end of the joke, that means the show ... is for you and you should expect more of that, if you didn't, that's a sign this isn't for you. I think letting the viewer know about the anime's atmosphere from the beginning is a good thing and that joke really breaks the glass, I liked it and I expected to be entertained more, which happened all the way till the end of episode 4.

The viewer should not expect a heavy plot, sure something big happens that will shake our characters actions but all in all it's a slapstick comedy, what is important is how the characters react to different events in the anime, what funny, out of place things they'll do to keep us on watching. The show works this way because the two main characters on the pirate ship are fun to watch and interesting. The biggest asset is the characters, some of them may be cliche and boring but they work well and they offer us great moments of comedy.

- Yaoi Seitarou, the captain, is characterized in episode 2 by Chiraku: "The captain of the pirate space ship, Seitarou is a smuggler, still a virgin, and quite the bad guy. He brings porno discs produced on the dark side of the moon to buyers in the space colonies. He also takes sand from Mars and sells it as an aphrodisiac for high prices."
- Chiraku, a perverted robot who tells dirty jokes
- Meifa, Lyla and Jojo, three rich high school girls who board the ship
- Gannet, a Haman Karn look-alike
- Purin-Purin, the ship's sentient computer who has the appearance of a hot girl
- Hoshi Neko, a cute small cat

I liked Seitatou's personality, he's a cool guy, free as a bird, a pirate, he's not your usual dense harem protagonist or super perverted geek, sure, he likes girls, has a porn stash, he developed his ship AI to look like a hot girl but he's not boring to watch and anything can happen when he's around. On the other hand, the robot Chiraku is a perverted and crazy character and he always makes fun of Seitarou, he is voiced by the veteran VA (Voice Actor) Kamiya Akira who played Mendou Shuutarou, Saeba Ryou, Roy Focker, Kazamatsuri Shinnousuke, the way he puts soul into Chiraku is great and he became for me a lovable character ever since I first heard him.
The three girls are kinda bland in the beginning of the anime, one is a crybaby and the others are just there. The voices don't help either, the VAs sound like just reading lines and get on with it, very weak in my opinion. Only in the end though, they sound more "in-character" and like they put their soul into it, like they are part of the anime. many viewers may have problems with this, it can be a bit annoying.

Even if this is a comedy, expect a bit of drama related to space travel, robots trying to conquer humanity, kidnappings, space battles, gun shootings, pirates, lots of plot twists and so on. There's a character in there who looks just like Haman Karn (Gundam Zeta and ZZ), and she's important in one of the episodes, I say this is great fanservice for 80s Gundam enthusiasts.

The art style has a classic 80s look, with realistic looking characters (normal noses, normal eyes etc), it's not the best animated piece ever created but it's fair, the movements are a bit stiff but it doesn't endanger the overall experience. The backgrounds look fine, the ship is well detailed, the interior has many details too, the celestial bodies look alright, the robots and mechs too, you can see that a lot of work was invested into it.

We don't get that many sexy moments, some rare cleavages, few panty shots and maybe a scene with the boobs of a girl fully exposed, the creators wanted to cater any kind of audiences and they didn't exaggerate with some elements. I say it's pretty fine, in a 30 minutes episode we don't need two thirds of it to be filled with naked ladies (not that there's anything wrong with that), so the overall result is fair and watchable for different types of viewers.

No romance here either, our main guy hits on almost all the girls but there's nothing serious going on. The interactions between the characters was the thing I liked the most. There are some scenes where our boys and girls have fun on the ship, talking, cleaning rooms, making food (slice of life stuff), it felt fulfilling and it was nice to get to know them a bit more, it added depth to our bland girls and made Seitarou a more interesting guy, just my kind of thing. And by the end of the show you'll see that the relationship between them was really there, it looked authentic, it evolved from A to B, it wasn't just for convenience sake, but you'll have to get throw all of it to see it building.

It was a very easy watch for me, I knew where I was getting myself into from the first episode, I liked the laid back atmosphere and the idea of a guy who is a space pirate (I like this idea of freedom), the only bad things that he does is selling porn related stuff and dumb artifacts, so he's not a real evil pirate who hijacks ships and all, he even wants to save people from time to time (and if he gets something in return that would be a plus). The girls were cute, they were annoying in the beginning but I got used to them and by the end of the OVA they were interesting and I felt that they offered something overall. Chiraku was great with his jokes and shenanigans, Gannet has short appearances but she was fun to watch, she has a fiery personality (different that the 3 girls) and she has an awesome design (I'm a Haman Karn fan).

In conclusion, this show is for everybody, the animation is not dated, it doesn't have a heavy plot, it doesn't take itself too seriously. It's good for 80s anime lovers (it has that feel) and it's a fresh break from the serious plot and action heavy anime. It has about 2 hours in total and something happens every episode (be it a bizarre plot twist or some comedy moments interrupted by space battles), the overall plot is resolved at the end, so the viewer won't be disappointed if he wanted to find that out. It's a mix between comedy, SF, action, and space, it worked for me for I enjoyed it, I laughed every episode at the jokes, I was impressed by the ship's designs, I liked the characters and I easily followed the story. It was an enjoyable watch.

The decent direction, premise and overall progression of the plot make “Hoshi Neko Fullhouse” watchable. However, it suffers from tonal whiplash, overt lewdness (this lessens as the 4-episode series progresses), some key plot points being left under-explained or not explained at all, and a number of substandard technical aspects.

Regarding the plot, the synopsis listed on MAL as of this writing is completely incorrect; it sounds like a different show. The gist of the story is that after the appearance of a UFO, the supercomputer Eterna that runs everything on Earth suddenly unleashes a robotic uprising on the entire planet, rounding up humans, taking away their ... things and bussing them off to the equator to live primitively. This also causes all spaceships to stop functioning. Meanwhile, a guy who smuggles adult material for a living along with his robot on his unregistered spaceship finds that he’s the only “free” person around after the uprising, and ends up saving 3 rich girls whose spaceship stopped working en route to a chorus competition on Earth. After teaming up with the UFO and visiting a space pirate colony, they go to Earth to figure out what happened and to stop Eterna.

As I mentioned earlier, the premise is interesting, and the way the story unfolds, with lots of twists and mysteries, made me keep watching in anticipation of what would happen next. The direction is also pretty good, and there’s a nice callback near the end, with a scene nearly identical to the opening sequence. The opening and ending themes, as well as the background music, aren’t bad.

The main drawbacks of this series that would keep me from recommending it to others are the tonal whiplash, unexplained key plot points, and most of all, the lewdness that is particularly blatant in the first episode. The series is generally presented as being lighthearted, but there are some jarringly serious scenes interspersed throughout, such as someone attempting suicide, and people getting stripped of their belongings and forced onto buses to unknown destinations. Some such scenes are portrayed as being comedic, which is disturbing. For instance, spiking girls’ drinks in an attempt to score with them, confining girls in a room they were lured to under false pretenses, and kidnapping a guy and leaving him to die in a warehouse. These are all presented as funny scenes, when they’re actually creepy.

Discussing the unexplained key plot points in detail could be considered spoiling, so I won’t elaborate. The story does wrap up in a satisfying conclusion, but explanations for the main reasons why the events in the OVA occurred are brushed aside.

The lewdness of the OVA goes beyond mere “fanservice” and into crass, gross-out cringe territory. The OVA opens with the robot telling a long, grossly perverted joke. Also, as the main character is a young, single man living alone who smuggles adult material, his ship is shown as a “man-cave” of sorts with lots of dirty (in more ways than one) stuff floating around. He tells the robot to clean it up before the girls board the ship, but for whatever reason, the robot doesn’t, so the girls decide to clean it themselves, touching and examining all manner of nasty objects with their bare hands. Lots of nudity (and worse) is shown. When the girls move in, the robot secretly takes footage of one of them getting out of the shower, and shows it to the main character. Most of this type of content gets pushed aside in the third and fourth episodes (it’s particularly heavy in the first episode), but it’s present throughout the OVA.

The technical aspects are substandard. The animation is not that great. The voice acting isn’t, either, especially for the 3 girls, who are not voiced by professional voice actors. Even the veteran voice actors sound like they’re phoning it in at some points, just using their default voices, so the acting comes off as generic. In each episode, there are odd musical interludes that happen out of nowhere and stop as suddenly as they start. All of them are songs sung by the 3 girls, whose voice actors also sing the opening and ending. It seems that perhaps they were being promoted as an idol group, but that didn’t work out.

Overall, while there are some positive aspects to this OVA, and it is watchable, the abovementioned points, particularly the perverted and creepy “humor,” make “Hoshi Neko Fullhouse” difficult to recommend to the average audience.