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This was, no doubt, anime of the year. Yeah yeah there’s still a whole season left to air but how can it possibly match what was shown in here? What, you think the continuation of a well received romance like The Ramparts of Ice, a zombie show made by the author of Hitori Bocchi and Mitsuboshi Colors, the return of Black Clover with that annoying loud Asta, an adaptation of one of the most beloved jrpgs of all time, crazy concepts like Tank Chair and Fool Night, a remake of a CLAMP cult classic, a new season of the remake of the beloved classic Ranma, long awaited adaptations of Shounen Jump and Type Moon, and new entries for the beloved Cyberpunk Edgerrunners and Apothecary Diaries can match up to this? You’re crazy!
Those shows look like all fluff or dumb action or are old stuff thus automatically mid or milking stuff that already finished fine and the last one mixes mystery and politics, that’s boring!
And what, you think the likes of that boring Nippon Sangoku, that downer Ikoku Nikki, that nothing happens Atelier, that Akane-banashi that’s all talking and rakugo, can match up to this? What? Those Science SARU shows? I didn’t watch them yet but nyee those look boring I’m sure they suck. Well I guess opinions are like assholes and everybody has one! But yours is as dirty as Yanikos’ but not as funny!
TS the AOTY bro, peak fiction right here, peak on top of peak among the peak, le peakest of le peaks. Starting with the opening full of references to peak movies and also that boring overhyped Lord of the Ringzzz nye can’t all be perfect, but aside from that it’s like a collection of peaks! You know you are watching peak when the opening is like 30 peaks combined! References are homages to the mediums that made us and Yani Neko is so full of them! You can spend like half an hour pointing out at the screen finding all of them like that DiCaprio meme! Memes are funny and peak! And that gif is from Once Upon a Time in Hollywood, more peak! Because it has lots of references so if i make a reference to it while talking about the references in Yani Neko’s opening then that makes me peak! Peak multiplied by three! Peak cubed! Yeh i know math I’m so smart nya. Opening so good even the best girl Kansai Neko uses its melody to parody it and sing about Yanikos’ pussy, so funny! And it’s about the pussy of a pussy! So smart, and it shows that the show knows how lo laugh about itself!
The ending is not as good but still pretty peak, all those psychedelic colors make you feel like flying like the characters do in the clip and in the show because they do drugs, what a way to transmit the feel of the visuals and the same thing the characters go through so well! Peak i tell you. Oh and at episode 11 the singers of the opening and ending are reversed, what a subversion of expectations! And as we anime fans know, subversion of expectations is peak!
But oh the anime, it has cats so it’s peak, because cats are cute and funny, they are peak! And they are also cute anime girls. Everyone knows anime is watched because of cute anime girls and here they are cats as well so peak squared! I’m so smart nya oh and at some point the anime also shows how sexy they are, not like those sissy sanitized western animation afraid of pussys! nyahyahaha I did it again! Kansai joke! But yeah cute sex anime girls that make me wanna CUUUUM so peak, and there are even some milfs, even more peak because milfs are so peak. But oh this anime is not some low level degenerate shit, as it never sexualizes the two girls in the cast that still go to highschool, that’s because it’s peak.
The anime presents bizarre situations for every girl and it’s so funny, but the comedy is a mix of raunchy and toilet humor so a lot of people won’t like it, they are pussys and don’t like humor about pussys nyahyahaha. But the anime is not just silly, it also shows how problematic is what and how the characters consume drugs, so it’s a meaningful and smart anime too, so peak! Yeah it’s not just the protagonist, the screentime is dedicated to a whole bunch of other nekos too, such a well distributed look and insight for everyone in the cast nya, so peak! Not like that other smoking series of the season that only shows two characters and is completely pro cigarette. Oh and even the landlord is shown bizarrely and funny as he secretly faps to the nekos, There’s one episode where he is found out by the mangaka woman and the scene seemed like a reference to School Rumble, peak square! For not only making references but also to School Rumble, one of the most beloved anime comedies of two decades ago, it’s old but not mid, it’s peak!
And the anime also has high production values and everyone is a cat so they drop some nyas when they talk, so cute! So yeah it’s good in animation and sound as well, that’s because it’s peak!
The definitive anime of the year, it has everything, comedy, drama, social commentary, lewd content, cat girls, references, gross humor, character fleshing, good animation and voice acting and the opening of the year and a very good ending too, what more can you possibly want? The best moment was at the very end when Yaniko said I AM THE NEKOS AND IT’S YANI’S TIME while farming aura, because as we know when the main character aura farms its the peakest moment of the anime! And afterwards started to shit tun tun tun sahur turds all over the place and smoke
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cigarette butts at the same time and vomiting all over the face of the landlord marcelo tralalelo frapuccino, what a display of ability! Truli an anime that deserved to be talked about all over social media and that we will keep talking about 24/7 for generations cause it’s the peakest of peaks! But no anime is perfect and this one has an issue, and that’s that there was no impact frames in it, come on! We anime fans know that flashy animation with impact frames is the sign of good anime! But oh well, Yani Nekos wanted to at least give the other animes of the year a chance, anime so peak it even thinks of its rival shows!
It even made me notice the eternal superiority of cats over dogs since forever in animation and awake to all of my new favorites, with this almost perfect show at the top for both anime and manga obviously, followed in anime by Kanojo to Kanojo no Neko the best Makoto Shinkai anime, Chii’s Sweet Home, Bananya, Nekomonogatari Kuro that stars Hanekawa the best Monogatari girl because she is a catgirl, so triple peak! As being from Monogatari already makes her peak. Then My Roommate is a cat the best anime from 2019, Wata no Kuni Hoshi, a rare instance where an old anime is peak and no mid, The Cat Returns the best Ghibli movie, and some recent modern classics such as Yoru wa Neko to issho and Dekiru Neko wa Kyou mo Yuutsu. As for mangas I repeat some of those but also add Tokyo Mew Mew, Asobi ni Iku Yo!, Nekogahara, the second best anime of the year Neko to Ryuu, Neko Majin with Akira Toriyama at his peak and the best Nekopara manga nyahyahaha my taste is so peak!
And now to end the review with the ranking of characters
Kansai Neko the best girl and waifu of the year and of all time.
Yaku Neko as a peak second place.
Saori Tatsuno who is so peak she gets third place despite not being a catgirl.
Imoko Satou for being so caring and devoted to her sister without making it weird, so cute and peak.
Aru Neko, funny alcoholic girl.
Jikaki Neko, an aspiring writer influential for everyone that watches the show.
Penpen Neko who reflects the harsh reality of homeless people in Japan.
Yaniko! Who is so peak she lets others be better characters than her despite being the protagonist.
Shizue Satou cause she is a catgirl milf and that’s so peak.
And Hame Neko who is worst girl but still funny and still peak cause she’s from the peakest anime and fiction of all time.
yani neko
yani neko
yani neko yani neko
Boy that was painful to write, and I guess even more to read, I would be surprised if someone even put through all that shit. So yeah, I think ever since Horimiya that I didn’t see such a mediocre anime undeserving of such controversy and polarizing opinions. On one hand there’s people treating it as such a deep and misunderstood masterpiece and like it was Trainspotting, Traffic or Requiem for a Dream in anime or something. While on the other hand you have people saying it’s the worst most gross anime of all time, which is far from the truth if you know about crude anime like Unko-san, Shitcom, Trap-kun, literal toilet humor anime like Panty & Stocking in Sanitary Box or The Eternal Family, or every anime Onara Gorou was involved with, just to name a few.
In reality it stands in a weirdly disappointing middle of the road, nowhere near as good nor as bad as you would expect from its overblown reputation. To be frank, I do think the first episode of this anime was good and among the best I’ve seen so far from this year, if not the actual best. It’s gross, it’s supposed to be funny, but in a dark comedy kind of way showing the protagonist as the lowest of the low. Addicted to cigarettes, dirty, only working to buy cigarettes and smoke, living in such a dumpster fire of an apartment it makes her own sister suit up in protective gear only to go see her and enter such a vomit inducing filthy place. We see her puke, get diarrhea, notice her trash filled room, get depressed, blame herself, be referred as an “are” which I suppose it could mean either “that one” or “it” from even her friends, and promise to fix her life…but then at the end of the episode she finds a cigarette and smokes once again.
There was potential from that episode to get a show that’s actually about addictions like the movies I already mentioned or The Football Factory, yeah, that’s another one worth recommending, or in anime stuff like Welcome to the NHK, which also was about the degraded mental state of a shut in nini. But the series never follows through with that potential. After that episode we still do see the main character doing disgusting things like eating mosquitos and such, which is meant to be gross and degrading and for many it was a lot and enough to hate and/or drop the show, but because of its tone and most of the characters being cats, it is also supposed to be funny.
From there, the anime never retains that same level of seriousness and drama from the first episode, it abandons it completely for the sake of comedy. The theme of addictions is there and expands to the rest of the cast as well, not just the protagonist. There’s another catgirl, Yakuko, that does more drugs besides cigarettes and another one, Aruko, that’s alcoholic. There are more characters than these and although they do get into bizarre situations, those are not related to addictions.
Jikaki is an aspiring writer in highschool that publishes her work on Internet but can’t seem to get her story going, that’s why she consults Saori Tatsuno, who is a struggling mangaka.
Then we got Penpen who says nonsense about living in harmony with nature and the waves of life and stuff, to basically hide how bad she has it as a homeless person that occasionally breaks into her friends’ apartments.
The last one is Hame who wants to become famous as a streamer and thus films herself and her friends, sometimes raging while playing fighting games, other times trying to be provocative (in a sexy way, not baiting), and sometimes making fun of her friends’ hobbies or timepassers and stuff, that’s why she’s the worst despite not being addicted to anything. Or maybe you could say that she has the vice of devices like a computer or a cellphone and being online and the desire to become famous and hit it big, but there’s no real follow up to that as it happens with everything else in the not story.
Finally we got two of the best girls, Imoko who’s the most normal and moral character that wants for her family to do better, and Kansai Neko whose only bad habit is being a failure of a comedian to the point of cringe. She otherwise hangs out with her friends being the most sane by far, has part-time jobs and even hides her normal self while in university.
The only one who the anime shows somewhat seriously is Yaku, who we see visiting her family on occasions, trying to do something outside, and even has a part-time job. Some people theorized that her drug addictions are the consequence of depression and family issues, but nothing is explored remotely enough to back that claim up substantially. The others are not shown with any attempt at depth nor introspection, which is why I raise my eyebrows when I see comments about the seriousness, depth, insight and meaning of this anime. I mean look at Yaniko’s mother, she clearly has a smoking problem but the series shows it comically every time.
Not even what was shown about Yaniko in the first episode remains consistent, we see her being shown in a comical manner, even when she wants to take part-time jobs and does them atrociously. Plus she sometimes bothers her friends who at times are doing worse than her and mostly to just get cigarettes out of them. It’s like the anime wants you to dislike her since there’s never an attempt to follow through that promise she made in the first episode and for her attitude towards her friends.
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Maybe you’re thinking well duh that’s the point but just beating someone on the floor that is not even actively a bad person can’t count as good theme exploration, at worst it becomes misery porn. Plus like I said, the anime is not consistent about it, as later on not even her sister is suited up while visiting her, but also because at times she appears to be funny or even sexy instead of the disgusting mess and a warning sign that she is supposed to be. For the sake of analyzing the theme exploration or lack thereof within the show, let’s take a deeper look at the narrative regarding that.
After the first episode we see Yaniko doing the most gross and disgusting and desperate and wild shit, but only when she’s alone, her supposed funniest side when she’s with her friends, and only seen as sexy by men of all ages. For the sake of argument, let’s try to see these different perspectives as deep and complex and say that Yaniko’s friends see her as funny out of love and care for her, while men sexualize her through what I believe it’s called a bedrotten girlfriend fetish, one of the most disgusting I have come to know not only for being dirty but for the implied power and control dynamics over a person in such a vulnerable state. Meanwhile Yaniko’s at her worst only when she is alone and seen only by us, the audience. Let’s complicate it by saying that it’s not that the theme is handled inconsistently but rather about outsiders not knowing other people at their worst and in turn how no one shows that side of them to others, Kansai hides her true self in university after all. That would be true for strangers for Yaniko but not her friends and family, as reflected on the very first episode.
Plus the male gaze part of that idea about the themes is lost when the lewd content exceeds the protagonist later on in the series as it becomes a full on ecchi by having the landlord and other older men being closet perverts with a catgirl fetish, and plenty of other catgirls appearing naked at some point. The worst offender was Kame, who despite not appearing naked and being the worst girl for the reasons I already mentioned, being the worst friend in the show, there was no need for her to suffer the sexual harassment and being two seconds away from suffering a sexual assault that she had to go through on episode 11. What I’m saying here is that the sexualizing part of the anime is not some kind of theme exploration, it’s plain fetishistic exploitation as usual.
Even disregarding the themes, there’s kind of no narrative to even talk about here, as there’s close to no ongoing plot nor story nor continuity, not even if you see the series as episodic, as every episode consists of several mini segments of bizarre situations to the point where I can imagine the source material being a 4-koma manga.
So yeah, there’s kind of not much of a story nor characterization worth talking about here so I’m definitely not a part of the crowd treating this anime as serious and deep and meaningful. But it’s not like I think it’s the worst and most disgusting shit ever like some others said, as the examples I named at the beginning of this review prove. Not even the erocomical parts are that different from the usual ecchi stuff. Kyuuketsuki Sugu Shinu was full of weird perverted freaks that did accomplish in making it a bizarre sexual comedy, here the nudity is just plain old fanservice.
And it’s not like I can say that Yani Neko is bad either, despite wasting the potential of its first episode, as it doesn’t really feel ill intended to addicts and people at their worst either nor like it’s intentionally mocking them like, let’s say, The Big Bang Theory does with geeks and nerds, or well, its idea of super geeks and nerds, you know, people that’s into…super mainstream stuff like Star Wars, Star Trek, 80s action films, Marvel & DC, ugh, and even its comedy is not limited to references like that show. It’s not mean spirited because it also shows the characters in bizarre situations without their addictions taking a part in it. Even outside of the protagonist, the anime seems to portray the rest of the cast as just normal people trying to live their normal lives despite their addictions or vices, definitely not trying to fix them though.
At the same time, that's why I can’t be impressed with this anime either. Okupas and Tres Acordes from my country are dramedies that show people at their worst, either depressed, getting into illegal activities and crimes, doing drugs, or at all once, in a kind of serious way with plot continuity, permanent consequences, lasting stakes (for the former), mixing the slice of life with fantasy and sci-fi elements (for the latter), and some kind of character development and catharsis for the characters, beyond just the funny moments and references.
Speaking of references, I do think that the opening is the best I’ve seen so far from this year. Yeah the clip is completely made of references which makes it seem lazy for some, and I wish the anime had half the stuff happening in it, but the song is good, the lyrics are relevant to what happens in the show and the directing and editing are phenomenal at mixing the visuals and the music. The ending is indeed good stuff with its psychedelic colors and although the song is typical jpop stuff, the lyrics reflect a kind of psychosociological themes that I wished were in the series. The background music was hardly noticeable for me, but the sound effects were good and the voice acting…well everyone talks with nyas and accents and yells so that stands out but it’s not amazing either.
The visuals are very solid in the beginning enhanced by very good directing but they do get worse and more typical as the show goes on. Nevertheless, it’s a solid work of good artwork and backgrounds and even motions for when they are needed. There isn’t much to talk about as far as special effects go and the character designs are just typical catgirls. Even the gross content is chickened out in the visuals by censoring or toning down the shitting and vomiting by either pixelating them or replacing them with rainbows like a typical comedy.
In conclusion, the discourse surrounding the anime and seeing the care that the team behind it put into it to the point where we got to see the seiyuu of the landlord doing actual larping of his character, were more fun and interesting than what the series actually shown. As it is, it stands in a weirdly disappointing middle of the road that’s not as bad nor as good as you could expect from its good and bad reputation. Recommended only for people who likes stoner comedies and bizarre humor as long as they don’t mind toilet humor, or to see what the polarizing discourse is all about, other than that it’s an easy pass as there are a lot of better or more extreme options out there.
Recommended better stuff
-Movies about addicts like Trainspotting, Traffic, Requiem for a Dream or The Football Factory
-Welcome to the NHK for a story about a depressed shut in nini
-Okupas (for those of you with a Netflix account thus you can turn on subs) for a series about a middle class guy falling into the low class and becoming depressed and getting into a life of crime and illegal activities. It’s solid but not as good as I might be making it sound.
-Tres Acordes (but only for ACTUAL Latin American people)
-The Angry Video Game Nerd (toilet humor and crude comedy about reviewing retro video games and there’s even some continuity, what more could an otaku that watched Yani Neko want?).
-Aachi wa Ssipak (Aeni toilet humor and rule of cool action movie with a point, kinda, and what do you know, it’s about exploiting people’s addiction to drugs).
-Dead Leaves (The former if it was made earlier and by Hiroyuki Imaishi, but lacks a point).
-You can also check out the stuff in http:// myanimelist.net/ stacks /85045 for more smoking manga I guess (let this review have this link mods please, it’s relevant).
Not really recommended but more extreme stuff that stands out more
-Kyuuketsuki Sugu Shinu (bizarre sexual comedy)
-Gross stuff like Unko-san, Shitcom, Trap-kun, Panty & Stocking in Sanitary Box (you need to watch the first season of the main series first), The Eternal Family (there’s kind of a point at the very end), Onara Gorou anime (he likes to make series about living sentient farts for some reason).
5/10
