Nekopara finally got a full length anime and what with the OVA being a small taste as to what the anime series was gonna be, Nekopara 's anime series in itself is a decent slice of life comedy anime with a *ahem* few changes from the game to make it fit into the slice of life comedy anime. Nonetheless Nekopara has neko-moeness ALL ROUND.
Nekopara's anime series follows Chocola voiced by Yuki Yagi and Vanilla voiced by Saeki Iori in their daily lives in La Soleil, a patisserie owned by Kashou Minazaki. Now slightly diverging from the game which starts as soon as the first episode is that Chocola finds a stray young cat that latche sonto Chocola, unable to know what to do, Chocola secretly tries to hide this stray cat, but as this stray cat...let's call her Cacao, well Cacao pretty much becomes aprt of the cast and we gets some development to her, with her opening her up to the rest of the cast as well as her joining in the rest of the core cast in their antics, mostly as a cheerleader for Chocola.
Nekopara is a slice of life comedy to the T and LA is fine with that as the antics the core cats goes through is fairly good comedy especially with the character interactions of the cast at that. The slice of life aspect focuses on the cats as well as Cacao for the most part, the comedy revolves around the character interactions, all mostly moe and like LA said at the start of this review, this is pretty much Neko paradise bliss as far as LA is aware.
Now since Nekopara is a character slice of life comedy centric anime, let's talk about the characters. Starting off, Kashou Minazuki is such a nothing character, being the owner of Vanilla and Chocola, but he's mostly in the background to make way with Shigure Minazuki, his little sister and the rest of the cats as the center focus. Oddly enough Chocola and Vanilla are mostly the narrative focus characters instead of the "player character" of Kashou in this anime's case. Vanilla is the stoic teaser and minder to the genki ditzy Chocola. Before Cacao opens up, Chocola mostly minds Cacao, but afterwards, Chocola is at the most her usual self anyways. Coconut voiced by Marin Mizutani is the clumsy but doesn't know her own strength and often butt heads the the tsundere Azuki voiced by Shiori Izawa. We also have Cinnamon voiced by Yuri Noguchi a ditzy but ecchi daydreamer whenever a sexual innuendo comes into play and Maple voiced by Miku Ito who's the most grounded of the cast and minds the rest of the cats. Lastly the aforementioned Shigure, Kashou's little sister and mostly keeps the cats in check though her absolutely loving cats is kinda running gag to her.
The Neko's themselves do get screentime as well as their own (or coupled together) character development in one episode thus making us want to know them better, of course Chocola, Vanilla and Cacao gets majority of the screentime because of the Cacao plot point but the rest of core cast gets their own, like Coconut and Azuki having an all day competition with one another, Maple's singing career, Shigure's depressing day and finally digging into Cinnamon's ditzy fantasizing head. Minimum cast and all utilized which is all good.
The animation done by Felix Film was actually done pretty well, from the moe yet polished character designs and it's decent backgrounding. Felix Films if anything did itself quite well for a "slice of life comedy" especially when it's to it's character designs and considering it's a character slice of life comedy, Felix Film knew where to pull in the effort to the animation in. All in all Felix Films did great in terms of character designs.
The voice cast does have a few changes form the game, but nonetheless there were some good voice actors to point out, like Yuki Yagi as the genki Chocola, the stoic one liner of Saeki Iroi as Vanilla to the ditzy ecchi daydreamer of Cinnamon and Shiori Izawa as the tsundere Azuki and finally M.A.O as the competent but lovingly funny Shigure Minazuki, the weirdest thing is of Cacao's vice actor as her voice actor Yuuka Morishima doesn't really do much as Cacao besides some grunting and noises as Cacao, yes as Cacao opens up so does the amount of lines Yuuka gets but semantics. Nonetheless the voice cast were pretty great especially from Yuki Yagi as Chocola.
But yes, as much as Nekopara is infamous for it's rather...*ahem* explicit adult material of it's visual novel, the anime adaptation is a bleached underpants anime adaptation of the visual novel and given us a more slice of life comedy of Nekopara's source material and what with Cacao brought into the anime adaptation is somewhat proof of that and LA doesn't mind as LA REALLY didn't mind Nekopara's comedic slice of life hijinks one bit and more or less gave this anime series as a VERY GOOD breather anime in comparison to the animes in Winter 2020 (and no LA doesn't mean this in a bad way either). If Nekopara achieved anything, it's essentially the calming cat videos in Youtube bundled into anime form with all it's slice of life comedy elements to it and of course with what character developments given to the Neko's were also good as well.
Coconuts is best Neko, don't at me!
