Sunday 4 October 2009

Nyan Koi! - Episode 1

As one of my esteemed fellow 'bloggers has so often asserted: "Fat cats make anime better". Well, if ever there was a test of that theory then Nyan Koi! must be it.

The trouble is, as a protagonist you really don't want your anime to be filled with cats (fat or otherwise) when you're allergic to them - Such is the dilemma facing Junpei Kousaka, the star of this series. As if being allergic to felines in a cat-loving household isn't bad enough as it is, he also manages to find himself cursed by a cat God on account of accidentally breaking a statue of the local cat deity during a freak accident. This curse thus means that he has to grant 100 favours to cats to free him of this curse which allows him to hear what cats are saying, and that will eventually turn him into a cat himself.


Yes, it's an utterly daft plot, but aside from filling our screens with fluffy cuteness throughout Nyan Koi! is at its heart a romantic comedy, with Junpei setting his heart on cute class mate Kaede Mizuno.. Another girl who just so happens to adore cats, albeit living in a dog-loving family. In this first episode however, Junpei finds himself tasked with helping some cats from being terrorised by a human who is being entirely too over-bearing with them... and the rest writes itself really.

To be honest I don't think you could ever expect too much of a series with this kind of plot synopsis - It's always going to be fun and amusing at best and nothing more. Thankfully, this first episode just about does enough to remain fun, although the whole thing carries very much a "seen it all before aura" about it in terms of the scenarios and comedy employed, if not the actual specifics of the story itself. I fear that this feeling of familiarity probably won't go away as the series progresses, which threatens to dull that generic sense of fun, but we shall have to wait and see if it can at least build the Junpei-Kaede relationship into something special to dig the series out of the mediocre standing it looks likely to hold.

2 comments:

Seinime said...

And I can never be disappointed with romantic comedies...wait.

Koi said...

Just fantastic, looking forward to the next in the series !