Mayoi Neko Overrun!

'Mayoi Neko (Stray Cats) Overrun!' is a harem comedy mainly about one guy and three girls in a cake shop called "Stray Cats". The owner of the shop is a tennen ("natural boke", someone who has zero common sense) woman who likes to find stray cats and sometimes kids, and provide them shelter in the shop. Our protagonist Tsuzuki Takumi is one of those human stray cats, and the story begins with the arrival of the second human stray cat, Kiriya Nozomi.


STORY: 6/10
Pretty common setting with plenty of parodies.
As far as I can tell, only first and last three episodes were the main story with ... Kiriya Nozomi as central focus, despite all the episode titles were about her.

Just as with the animation, there was a different director for each episode. It seems like they were given the freedom to do whatever the hell they wanted to do with filler episodes from ep 4 to 9, and that's exactly what they seemed to have done.

Episode 4: Possible 'FMP Fumoffu' onsen parody with a sudden parody of Ping Pong (2002) movie?
Episode 5: Went for character development with fan service.
Episode 6: Entire episode on a PV shoot, reminds me of 'Haruhi' movie shooting episode.
Episode 7: Entire episode on mecha parodies.
Episode 8: Entire episode on a custom Jenga game.
Episode 9: Went for straight romance drama.

Whether it worked or not is up for debate, but they all had great slapstick pacing, and I personally found the noticeable difference in direction to be quite entertaining.

Final episode was a recap of the series, which is pretty rare nowadays. The commentary was pretty funny, and I think it represents the freedom in production of this series very well (since it shows that they were given total freedom even the series composition stage).


ANIMATION: 8/10
Notice the animation director and the production studio for animation work assistance is different for every single episode.
Animation quality varied by episode, like episode 1 (Studio Comet) and episode 8 (Sunrise) were significantly better than the rest, but generally above average for harem comedy series.

Character design was decent, with big-eyed attractive girls and signature features (cat ear hair, red cross-patterned ribbons etc) and comments. Despite great influence by animation director and work assistance, character animation consistency was better than average, with exception to episode 11 (Studio Blanc.), which had distinctly different drawing style that I think worked pretty well.

You can tell none of the animation directors and studios wanted to be seen as a slacker (less deadline rush probably helped too), and we are treated to quality animation with subtle difference in style for every single episode, which I found to be very fun to watch.


SOUND: 7/10
Voice acting was very strong, especially for Serizawa Fumino and Kikuchi Ieyasu. Filled with emotion and highly motivated seiyuu staff.

BGM was unremarkable, but that is expected for harem comedy series.

OP/ED were extremely weak seiyuu songs. I can kind of imagine a bunch of NEETs dancing otagei to it. Three "special EDs" for episodes 6, 7, 11 were somewhat interesting though.


CHARACTER: 7/10
Picking a girl for the indecisive protagonist sure is difficult for this series. We have Nozomi, who's a tennen cat girl who's good at everything and goes along with everything. Then Fumino, a tsundere childhood friend (i.e. the "invincible character" if this was 'eroge'). Finally Umenomori Chise, a super -pushy billionaire lolita. I have to say I liked the balance with tsundere and pushy loli fighting for the guy with tennen as a mediator.

Yes, we have a lot of stereotypical character personalities here, but they're all so off-the-chart in each characteristics (like tsundere so much that Fumino always means the opposite) actually made very interesting story developments possible, though they do get a bit annoying after a while.

Character development is not really expected in a slapstick series like this, but Fumino did start expressing her feelings, and Nozomi's gradual realization of friendship and family was depicted very well.


ENJOYMENT: 9/10
I personally liked the characters, and thought there were couple of really funny episodes. Just like Haruhi 2009's "∞8", most of the watch value was in subtle difference in animation styles and in this case, different director for each episode too.

The original setting and story may be unoriginal, but there was abundance of creativity in production stage of this series made possible by one-episode-only staff and teams. Changing animation style, good pacing, hilarious gags, constant fan service, repetitive violent retribution, great directions.

It's in a crappy genre where you can't expect any story, character development or value to begin with, but there was some of each in this series.
As far as watch-and-forget comedy goes, this is as good as it gets. 'Mayoi Neko Overrun!' was hands-down the best comedy of the season for me since all other comedies this season were plagued with horrible pacing and letdowns.

Mayoi Neko Overrun is basically 12 anime in 1 anime. It has a different episode director, animation director and key animation every episode. How does it matters?

It actually doesn't matter. If you are one of those who hate "generic" otaku anime, PLEASE DON'T WATCH THIS ANIME. It has everything you don't want to have in it, like tsundere, dense MC, harem, fan-services. If you get bothered by the major premise, there is no way you can enjoy the minor staff.

But if you are one of those who actually appreciate and enjoy school harem anime, Mayoi Neko Overrun! will definitely be a refreshing and rare watching ... experience for you, since there are 12 different styles of presentation. You don't see anime do this that often, especially in the harem category. Hope that you can match up with the "Denpa" comedy. That's how most of the anime by AIC works, just like Sora no Otoshimono, Oreimo, Haganai. They bear the weight of being entertainment gearing towards male otaku audience, but they still putting a lot of effort in the meticulous matters (that actually majority of the watchers do not cares, they don't even notice, Oreimo is the biggest example).

Story: 6
The overall flow of anime feels like Kotoura-san (another anime by AIC), 3 episodes of story, Slice of life for the middle episodes, then get back to telling story near the end of the anime. This pace changing is not very viewer-friendly and got a lot of complain in Kotoura-san, but it works out well here.
Story is fair, actually the worse part of this anime is the story. I mean the first 2 episodes.
The middle part is where this anime shine. It is fair to say that the Mayoi Neko Overun! starts at episode 4.
The general feeling of the story is heartwarming, just like every other work by Matsu Tomohiro (R.I.P.), its original creator.

Art
Art is pretty good. The 12 different styles of presentation already provide enough things for you to pay attention to. The occasional 3D animation is great, especially in the episodes preview where we get 3D maids.

Sound
It has an incredible voice acting cast. If you are a fan of Japanese voice actors, you sure would know how big that cast is and you would probably enjoy the anime just by listening to the seiyuu's performance.
They do put some effort in their opening and ending too, just standard AIC things. Not on Oreimo or Heaven's lost property level where you get a new ed every episodes. But you can expect there may be different ed in a few of the episodes. If you are one of those who skip everything then it doesn't matter.
In episode 4 there are some very funny use of background noises and bgm, you can pay some extra attention to it.

Characters
Just the characters you can expect from a harem anime. It's a cute and fun cast and so it's great. As much as I admire originality, there is no need to blindly search for originality in every aspect of a show.
Kiriya Nozomi has a very cute and interesting design. I will not be surprised if Mashiro Shiina's design is inspired by her. Since Mayoi Neko Overrun is actually quite popular in Japan back in 2010. If I recall correctly the BD sales at first release is around 4500 which is well above average.

Enjoyment
Comedies are more towards random or slap stick comedies, Baka to test/ Inu to Hasami wa Tsukaiyou's style. Keep it in mind that you're watching a comedy then it would be enjoyable. In other words, if you know how to have fun, you'll enjoy it. I know it sounds stupid but you'll understand what I mean if you are a patron for these light novel comedies.
There are a lot of fanservices too, and I like it.

Overall
I usually rate any anime that I thoroughly enjoy a 10, but I can only give it a 9 here because to be honest I don't enjoy the first 2 episodes very much.

Another thing to keep in mind is that I'm like the perfect target audience of this anime. If you don't care about seiyuu or don't like school harem romcom, fan-services and all the other staff I mentioned, I expect the rating would be a lot lower for you.

Never judge an anime based on it's name and cover image. This is a good example.

Takumi Tsuzuki, a boy abandoned in his infant years, adopted by very caring sister named Otome. He lives his life with Fumino Serizawa, someone was also abandoned in her childhood, both work in a pastery shop and go to school.

Eventually, Otome picks up this girl with a hair style similar to cat ears and has a tendency to say "Nyaa". Her name is Nozomi Kiriya and not much is known about her except her name. They find she is also an abandoned person. The story progresses as they learn ... more onto this mysterious person. Joining them is a little girl named Chise Umenomori putting them in strange situtations.

Terms of animation and sound, it is one of the best I've seen this season.

Still, it is too early for a complete review but so far this is recommended.

The anime is centered around "Tsuzuki Takumi", and the main characters are introduced during the first three episodes (Takumi is the only male main character).

Serizawa Fumino (Takumi's Childhood friend), Kiriya Nozomi (a "stray cat-girl"), and Unemori Chise are the main characters, which are introduced in the first two episodes. All three commonly have contradicting opinions and actions, and Unemori Chise gets in quarrels with Fumino quite often. It becomes apparent that the 3 of them fall for Takumi by the end of the first season, for the kindness and way he is (Season 2 is guaranteed, based on Manga to Anime comparisons).

The dialogue is ... very humorous, and the situations that Takumi is put in because of the three females makes you chuckle, regardless of how well you can suppress it. The scenes amplify the effect, since Mayoi Neko Overrun is an ecchi type anime. Episode 4 contains the most embarrassing scenes for the characters, and the way it is shown really makes you laugh.

No real battles, similar to the anime Spice and Wolf, but with a Cat-Girl rather than a Wolf-Girl (although the main character describes Fumiyo, his childhood friend, as a Wolf).

Animations are decent, could be slightly smoother and less... artifact-filled, and they could have extended the amount of time it took to go through the Season. Episodes 1-3 seem okay, as they are all for getting to know all the main characters, but it begins to feel rushed and compressed from the Manga afterwards. The main problems would be in the anime progression. The first three episodes were good. After that though, everything seems to go a bit off-topic. Randomness is very high, and you could begin to question why it was written this way.

The sound and art would be the strongest points of the anime, in my opinion, but they could have used certain soundtracks for different scenes, as I feel that some of them aren't exactly appropriate for the scenes. Animation is smooth, but you can notice that they cut some corners around the last few episodes.

Overall, I rate it 8 out of 10. The concept, artwork, and sound are good, but the execution of the plot/storyline was not great at all. Suggested for comedy fans.

Being one of my first reviews i hope this helps,

This show focuses on comedy and not enough development of the characters. I would really have liked to seen takumi form some sort of secret affection for at least one of the girls. This being said it still was quite funny and is a good show to watch

It wouldn't quite claim being a comedy gold, but it is up there. The humor in this anime is certainly that only a tsundre harem can provide. It's has both unique aspects and jokes that you see so much its almost expected. But it still does not fail to make you laugh.

The story is simple and humor filled. Only until toward the end does it get a bit on the feels side. still keeping a serious plot, it just manages to weaved well placed humor at the right times to make it all funny but not so funny that it's ridiculous. If you liked the ... story line and humor of Baka to Test, then you will enjoy this

Art styles is what you'd expect from standard. Simple, not too overboard with object skins and cell shading with an addition of light shades, tones and gradients where required. It is almost a text book example of 2010 anime art and animation styles.

Sound is really well done throughout the anime. besides the fact of the overused cicadas in any generic anime, it does utilize its music budget well when trying to create an atmosphere for the current scene. As for the opening and ending, the beats and tunes are good but the vocals seem out of place or off putting compared to the music.

Character development is slow but satisfying as the hero and heroines all get their fair share of development as well as knowledge of their past. The storys of each one get explained on a need to know basis when the episode calls upon why they do what they do.

Overall enjoyment is great. Humor, mild fan service every couple of episodes and added feels in the end. It really does take the romance genre as seriously as a comedy anime can at about the 8th episode mark as things really start taking place. It is well worth the watch.