Nekopara: Koneko no Hi no Yakusoku

We are once again blessed with more catgirls, this time it's a christmas party! Long story short, if you were expecting some fanservice or H-scenes, then turn away now, this is not the ONA for you, however, if you're looking for a cute, fluffy ONA filled with adorable catgirls and have 25 minutes to spare, then take a seat. Once again, we return to our family of catgirls, who look just as cute as ever. Set half a year before our main character Kashou opens the patisserie, this ONA depicts them at a younger and more delicate stage than before. Besides from being a bit younger, theirpersonalities are the same, Chocola being a bit of an airhead, Vanilla being one of the more level-headed catgirls, you know the rest. For what it tried doing, I can't say it failed, since it was a pretty nice and laid back watch, however I would've liked to see some more development for the catgirls. There's not really much else to say apart from that if what I've described sounds like something you might enjoy, then go for it, the catgirls are waiting for your arrival. If you haven't already, there's a 1 hour long OVA to watch for that extra layer of fluffiness, and if that isn't enough, there's also a fairly long set of VN's to read if you wanna go that extra mile.

So after the widely anticipated for anime "nekopara", with some success and a bit of budget left over, we are blessed with the extra episode. Lets see if it holds up to the 1 hour movie that brought us here in the first place in this review. Pros: Comparing it to the movie, all i can say was is that it's less dark. No elements of loneliness, desperation, or sadness significantly appeared in this series apart from that one minute of it as compared to the 30 or so minutes put into highlighting the desperation of "Not finding a hospital when your master is sick". It'sslightly different and I think while it's not true to the story, it at least suits the more light hearted themes of the visual novels. Unfortunately I can't credit that a lot since I have to really oversee a lot. The audio is rather nice to listen to. Quite spacious with an average sense of where the sounds come from. It's a touch warm, and I never felt the need to turn down the volume because someone's voice sounds shrilly. The eyes of every character looks very nice and decently designed. Mehs: The artwork to my surprise was different. I complained about the edgy lines and jagged frame rate of the movie and this totally fixed it. Lines are nice and smooth and easy to watch while things are a lot smoother to my eyes now. The issue comes in at the sacrifice. Everything looks super simplistic. Kinda like slapping beauty mode. There's not a lot of detail in anything really. So while it doesn't offend my eyes, it doesn't help its case either. Characters are generally inoffensive but bland. They are very likeable especially if you like me, already played the visual novel so you don't have to worry about one of the cats getting on your nerves. Issue being that they are extremely simplistic and one dimensional. They are as bland as it can get. Cons: Artwork while being extremely bland, the bigger offender is the inconsistency. I noted that around 9 minutes or so when Coconut, Azuki and Maple were sitting on the wooden floor, you can note that their bodies are way off proportions. Asked a few friends and they also knew what i meant. Coconut's head for the past 15 seconds look way too big for her extremely small body. Like botched photoshop. How to improve your experience with this anime: Firstly, put more attention into their eyes rather than their entire body and maybe you might not be as critical about the proportion issue. Secondly, constantly telling yourself every 5 minutes that the visual novel is a lot better. It helps. Thirdly, watch the movie, it may make the blandness a bit more tolerant. Conclusion: I think that if i were to describe this and the movie in one word, it would be "unjustified". I would understand if the story didn't have enough time to elaborate and so on yes. But the issue is that everything from the story, artwork, sound, character development etc, all felt like they are lacking so much that it didn't do the visual novel any justice. The visual novel has a much better and more developed story, way better color and art style, better quality sound and much better character development. It didn't make any sense that the difference between this and the visual novel is like heaven and the taco bell bathroom. The anime in itself isn't bad, but it certainly wasn't good enough to warrant its existence. It felt cheap. Maybe next time. Maybe.

to be honest I just watched the ona because i was bored and because catgirls. I think the nekopara franchise is great and all but this was just mediocre at best. The story is rather slow and we aren't really given alot of details about the life of chocola/vanilla before they arrived/were adopted. Don't get me wrong it has good plot and they could've easily stretched it longer (ie 30 minutes).It was good to see baby verisons of the catgirls but besides that theres not alot of reason to buy this ona/watch this ona. Then again you could always buy the offical ona to support sekai. overall :6-8/10 reason:slow story and short one at that