Mar 19, 2020
Move over Nekopara, not only does this have the better, less degenerate catgirls, but there's also catboys and dogboys(?) for twice the fun.
Uchi Tama?! Uchi no Tama Shirimasen ka? is the criminally underwatched spinoff of the children's show Tama and Friends where for whatever reason the writers decided to spice it up and give all the animal characters anthropomorphic human designs and renowned voice actors in the industry (HanaKana plays as a catgirl dressed like a maid if that's not enough to convince some of you).
On a surface level, the anime looks like nothing much. For starters, the central plot of the series is
...
extremely straightforward. Each episode has multiple storylines that simply focus on Tama, the titular catboy, and/or his friends and their peaceful, daily lives as they find ways to entertain themselves when their owners aren’t with them. The characters have unique designs for what they are, but they are mostly just archetypes and can easily be classified as the cowardly one, the airheaded one, the genki girl, the loner, etc. The series banks more on character interactions rather than character development.
Despite all of this, this is where Uchi Tama's main appeal comes from. The series doesn’t let us forget that these characters are actually just your friendly neighborhood cats and dogs. The artstyle sometimes switches around their human forms and their animal forms depending on the situation, mostly because it would probably be weird seeing a human groom himself like a cat. Pets aren’t like their human owners; they’re all just vibing, and that’s exactly what everyone in Uchi Tama is doing. Everything is told from the POVs of the animals, creating a comfy atmosphere that is almost equivalent of watching cat and dog videos on Youtube but in the form of anime characters. The storylines mostly feel like typical, cute slice-of-life shenanigans; for example there is one short skit just about two of the cats trying to stay awake so their owners can share some of their food with them, but there are occasional episodes with completely different tones ranging anywhere from a love story in which one of the cats falls in love to the gut-wrenching backstory of the local stray to a parody anime-style rap battle. The writers were not afraid to limit what they could do with these characters, and it shows.
Uchi Tama isn’t the most groundbreaking anime, but if you want to watch something relaxing yet entertaining (especially if you’re a pet lover), this series is worth a watch.
Reviewer’s Rating: 8
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