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Review

by Caitlin Moore,

Nekopara

Synopsis:
Nekopara
Do you love cats? You know, the bipedal animals with two furry ears, a tail, and near-human intelligence? If so, you should stop by La Soleil, the only cafe where the entire front-of-house staff is made of cats! Chocola and Vanilla live with the owner, Kashou, while his sister Shigure owns Azuki, Coconut, Maple, and Cinnamon. When Chocola finds a hungry kitten alone and without a master, it looks like their household may gain one more member!
Review:

Nekopara is a fetish anime. I say that without judgment, positive or negative; it's just a neutral fact. Specifically, it appeals to the pet fetish, a sort of dom/sub relationship in which the dominant party treats the sub as they would a pet.

This probably isn't a great revelation for people familiar with the franchise; after all, it is based on a porn visual novel. In its original incarnation, Kashou not only employs and cares for the cats of La Soleil, but also has sex with them. The explicit content has been scrubbed from the anime, but the bones of the fetish remain. The cats are sapient, although whether or not they're as intelligent as your average human isn't addressed. They are obedient and docile, doting on their master, with no greater ambitions than to be owned by a kindly human and serve them.

It doesn't hold up well to scrutiny - even the original creator begged on Twitter for people to not think about it too much and just focus on loving cats - but sexual fantasies rarely do. The simple matter is, if you're into it, you're into it, and you will probably like Nekopara. I myself am not a great fan of the fetish, but I entered into the show with the mindset of not kinkshaming its intended audience, and thus will not dock points for it being something I'm not particularly into.

I will, however, judge it as I would any other, non-fetish series, and in that matter, Nekopara is a very poor anime indeed.

Some porn VNs can have their sexual content removed and still have enough plot to hold up without it. After all, the globally-huge Fate franchise originated as porn games, as did many other beloved series. Nekopara is not one such series. Instead, it occupies an uncanny liminal space between innocence and sexuality, a kind of porn-without-sex where the cats are both infantilized and sexualized. As cats, they have a kind of innocent helplessness, dependent on their master for their livelihoods and unconcerned with most of the world outside. They even have to prove their competence in order to be allowed outside on their own.

On the other hand, they are constantly and pervasively sexualized. Coconut wears booty shorts with the straps of her thong visible over her hips. When two cats fight, they drop down to all fours, and the camera eagerly focuses on their genitals from behind. The kitten Cacao kneads Cinnamon's breasts until she orgasms.

Which again, if you have a pet fetish, might make you happy; if you don't, well, it's a bit more uncomfortable.

The humor is consistently unfunny, relying largely on run-on gags that didn't make me crack a smile once. Azuki and Coconut squabble about the same thing in every episode, with few variations on the theme. Azuki is the oldest, but short! Coconut is young but tall and has big boobs! Coconut taunts Azuki and Azuki gets mad! Repeat ad infinitum… or ad nauseum, as the case may be. A strange amount of the humor is about pee and the cats wetting themselves while they wait for the bathroom. Every time Cinnamon screamed about “stamens and pistils” or something making her wet, I died a little inside.

It would be one thing if the awkward comedy were only part of the package, and Nekopara still offered something in the way of story or characterization, but it doesn't. The characters all have precisely one personality trait, paired off for maximum shenanigans. Chocola is ditzy, and Vanilla is quiet but obsessed with Chocola. Azuki is short and Coconut is tall and the two fight about it. Maple likes to sing and Cinnamon is horny. Cacao, who is anime-original, is the typical quiet, docile anime child that bears zero resemblance to how children actually behave. Maple and Cacao are the only ones that have anything resembling any kind of growth, but even that is shallow and low-effort.

The human characters don't come off much better. Kashou is a complete nonentity, with a lack of personality that makes even the blandest of bland harem protagonists look interesting and dynamic. His little sister Shigure has a bit more personality, though most of it is devoted to obsessing over her cats and, to a lesser but still incestuous extent, her brother.

Mixed in with the comedic episodes are a few more serious, sentimental episodes. They generally have the same structure: something is going on with a character, but the others don't know what, so they try to figure it out and help the initial character, usually with some comedic misunderstandings along the way. At the end of the episode, the troubled character revealed what was going on all along, and everyone comes in for a hug and they all say how much they love each other. The pat, easily resolved conflict-to-resolution format would be right at home in a children's show where everyone learns an important lesson at the end of every episode, but feels awkward and strained in a show clearly geared toward adults.

I will grant Nekopara a couple things. For one, Cacao remains mercifully unsexualized for the entire run. Even when they had her try on swimsuits, they were actually cute and appropriate for a child her age. I don't want to give the show too much credit for how they characterized her, since no child is that meek and tractable without major developmental issues. It's also a pretty good-looking show. The female characters generally have the sort of bobble-headed proportions that are common in “cute girl” anime, but they're fairly appealing regardless, especially when they're imitating feline mannerisms. Their world is dominated by bright colors and realized in fluid animation, with plenty of attention to body language. Kashou's desserts look especially appealing.

The voice acting is… fine. Most of the Japanese actresses are relative newcomers, with their resumes with shows of similar ilk to Nekopara. The roles certainly don't demand much subtlety or nuance of performance, and none of them made me want to cover my ears. The performances in Funimation's dub are similar to the Japanese, with a bit more sass and zingers for Coconut and Azuki. Vanilla actually sounds nearly identical in both languages.

If you were to ask me if you should watch Nekopara, I'd counter with another question: do you have a pet fetish? If yes, then Nekopara will probably make you happy. If not, it's best to move on to something else.

Grade:
Overall (dub) : D
Overall (sub) : D
Story : F
Animation : B
Art : B
Music : C

+ Bright, fluid animation; appeals to a very specific fetish
Painful sense of humor; offers almost no appeal if you don't have that fetish

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Production Info:
Director: Yasutaka Yamamoto
Series Composition: Go Zappa
Script:
Ayumu Hisao
Kasumi Tsuchida
Kenichi Yamashita
Go Zappa
Storyboard:
Masashi Abe
Kenichi Imaizumi
Tomoe Makino
Kumazou Morino
Kazuo Nogami
Hiroyuki Shimazu
Saori Yamamoto
Yasutaka Yamamoto
Unit Director:
Masashi Abe
Tomoe Makino
Kazuo Nogami
Yuuta Takamura
Takahiro Tamano
Yasutaka Yamamoto
Shigatsu Yoshikawa
Music: Akiyuki Tateyama
Original Character Design: Sayori
Character Design: Yuichi Hirano
Art Director: Kenichi Kurata
Chief Animation Director:
Yuichi Hirano
Chie Mishima
Animation Director:
Kazuhiro Fukuchi
Yūki Fukuchi
Keita Hagio
Shō Hamada
Yūichi Ichihashi
Kiyotaka Iida
Yoshimi Iwata
Hiromu Matsumoto
Junpei Matsumoto
Yu Matsuo
Kenshin Murata
Hiroshi Numata
Tsutomu Ōno
Yōko Ono
Akihiro Ōtake
Masayuki Ozaki
Daisuke Saitō
Itaru Saito
Ryō Saitō
Chiyoko Sakamoto
Hitomi Satō
Tetsuya Satō
Hiroko Shigekuni
Akira Takeuchi
Kenji Terao
Koji Watanabe
Saori Yamamoto
3D Director: Hitomi Itou
Sound Director: Yasutaka Yamamoto
Director of Photography: Kazuya Iwai
Producer:
Sayori
Aya Iizuka
Kozue Kananiwa
Sôji Miyagi
Tomohito Naka
Nobuyasu Nobe
Kensuke Sadanaga
Satoshi Tanaka
Licensed by: FUNimation

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Nekopara (TV)

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