The plot revolves around the male lead, Junpei, and his quest to help a hundred cats to avoid turning into a cat himself - due to a curse brought about by his own clumsiness. So every episode or so we get to see a new cat with some trouble, and our allergic hero trying his best to help the poor cat.
Now unfortunately it isn't as promising as this might've sound. Nyan Koi! is a harem anime, and you'll find that it does a lot of harem-esque episodes and setting, among others the school excursion, swimming pool trip and naturally a swing to the amusement park. Most of the settings have been done before in more than one anime, and it's just being re-lived here, no genre-shaking events, no brilliance to set it out from the crowd.
When the show starts out the focus is much more on the cats, perhaps the reason being that all the characters aren't fully introduced yet, but it gradually turns more and more into a cheesy harem comedy, winding up as a lot more generic harem with every implication this brings forth. Dull and bland, with little to savor from it. Admittedly, it does present a few laughable moments throughout its whole, but aside that the entertainment value is very low, and unless someone is a big fan of harem series with little flair to them, it isn't worth the time it takes to watch it.
Character-wise, there's nothing to write home about. Every character fills their standard harem role to an extent. The wimpy main. The wimpy main's out-of-this-world-cute love interest. The wimpy main's tombyish childhood friend. The crazy cross-dresser. Even a pair of twins; the yandere and the tsundere girls. And a crazy older girl. The others aren't much to talk about either; from the typical mom-and-sister pair to the crazed old man, and of course one or two filler guy friends of the male lead.
Pretty much that's it. They're set in stone as charcaters and have limited potential. But Nyan Koi! at least tries to use that potential, salvaging what it could from the characters to make them better than bad, if not necessarily good.
The art style is not particularly outstanding either. The color palette is bright and rich, filled with clear and hapyp colors. The character designs aren't particularly outstanding, and rather flat. The detail put into the characters' various attires is a redeeming factor though. Overall the depth of the animation isn't very present, much due to the rather simple effort put into shadowing and light effects in general. Most of the scapes and interiors are made a tad too background-y, and as such the characters and other nonstatic objects feel slightly awkward in comparison. What it does well, however, is the visual humor. From their expressions to effects and the like, it does help in provoking a good laugh when due.
The soundtrack is just like the rest of the serious, rather average and nothing to really look forward to. The background music contains all the standard themes for the various harem anime situations and moods, and fits right in with said moods, but I found myself thinking how the music should've been better, which kind of deterred the mood. The opening theme is a rather typical upbeat J-pop song, with a bright, cheerful vocal line and likewise string parts. The ending theme is a tad richer in its build and thus more listen-able, but still has an air of ending theme written all over it.
Overall Nyan Koi! ends up nothing more than an average harem series with nothing in particular to add to the genre, and save for a few laughs here and there is not something worth the time it takes to watch it.
