Kemono Michi or "Animal Mask" is a show with an admittedly brilliant concept. The world's greatest pro wrestler gets isekai summoned by a bitchy princess, who demands that he slays all the monsters and solves all the problems. The issue is that the pro wrestler Genzo is a vegan/furry and he absolutely refuses to harm an animal! If you watched Shield Hero last season, you would think this is the start of a long grudge in which Genzo must slowly calculate his revenge. Nope! Genzo just walks up to the princess, does a German suplex on her, and that's the end of that entire sub-plot! Seriously, that's the hardest I laughed in an anime this entire season.
The show then moves on to Genzo gathering a furry harem and teaching the people of the isekai world to love monsters and co-exist with them instead of trying to slay them all. That's the entire plot.
For the first 3-4 episodes, Kemono Michi is genuinely hilarious. This is a low budget anime that doesn't look pretty and doesn't have the best character art. However, the comedic timing was such an improvement from the author's previous work Konosuba, that I was ready to crown this the king of all isekai!
Then they stopped writing new jokes. They just made all the gags from episodes 1-3 into running jokes that quickly wear out. By episode 8, the entire show is just little running jokes that are pasted together to somehow fill out a 20 minute run time. It's like watching an old Nostalgia Critic review...before he discovered sketch comedy and became even worse! I don't even need to watch the show anymore. I already know every single thing that's going to happen!
I'm going to be VERY generous and give this a 6 for the funny concept and those first few episodes. After episode 4 just stop watching. I was willing to go to bat for this anime and it completely let me down. Sometimes less is more. Golden Boy is still beloved after 25 years because it knew when to quit and not overstay its welcome. The manga just continued on with the same gags and eventually became a full blown porn. We don't talk about the manga. We love that short little 6 episode OVA. If you only have the material to write 4 episodes, then just write 4 episodes and release it as an OVA or ONA. Don't try stretch 4 episodes of material into 13-26 episodes!
