There might have been 1,000,000 ways to take an anime with this premise and make an absolute disaster out of it. Thankfully Monster Musume wasn’t one of the million. Monster Girls is an anime that will almost instantly ward off a lot of potential viewers, and that is understandable. The 12 episode harem-comedy has more than enough ecchi for 3 separate anime(although, not as ecchi as its source material) and the girls are, well….monsters? But I think that’s the magic here. The author presented us with a harem cast that is nothing like we were expecting. We were given a collection of diverse monster girls and by the end of the 12 episodes I really didn’t even think of them as monsters. Just girls. In that respect the main character does what any harem MC should do and that’s be relatable because he welcomes a house full of these girls and never even bats an eye at their monstrous forms.
The animation is only okay and the settings get rather stagnant. The voice acting however is some of the best I’ve heard in a long time. All of these ladies sounded exactly as they did in my head when I was reading the manga. I struggled to justify the score of a 7 over a 6 but the voice acting was what tipped the balance for me.
Monster Musume is, at it’s core, underneath all of the ecchi and characterizations, a warm hearted story of acceptance and understanding and I think that is the true magic behind the monster.
