Subscribe to the ANN Newsletter • Wake up every Sunday to a curated list of ANN's most interesting posts of the week.
read more
Gia's List: 9 Bizarre Anime Cats from Another Universe
by Gia Manry,
You don't need to read an article on Hello Kittymotor oil or hear about a café featuring cats to play with in Akihabara to know that Japan is completely bonkers for felines. But rather than rush out a mediocre list of the "best," "coolest," or "cutest" cats in anime, this list is all about tapping into that craziness to bring you nine of the weirdest cats in anime and manga, from cat girls and talking cats to cat plushies to plain old bizarre cats.
As far as bizarre goes, Blair isn't all that wild— she's basically a cat that turns into a busty, flirtatious woman. But she manages to rank on our chart for two reasons: one, in addition to being a cat she's also a witch. And a pretty powerful one, too, as it turns out. And the second reason? She could have been a one-off throwaway character, but Soul Eater's Atsushi Ohkubo actually developed her into a regular character of significance, with real character development and association with the rest of the series' colorful cast.
Cross a cat with a bat, marry the result to Hello Kitty, and Nyanpire is more or less what you'd get: an adorable merchandise-ready cat with fangs, wings, and...a cross for a belly button, oddly enough. If that's not quirky enough with you, Nyanpire also keeps company with an angel cat, a kitty version of Japanese warlord Date Masamune (named, of course, Date Masamunya) and exactly one normal cat, a Siamese with a pink bow twice the size of her head. (Two seemingly normal bats also appear.) The show doesn't start until July, which is why Nyanpire only ranks #8...for now.
7. Yoruichi (Bleach)
It's not that Yoruichi is a hot humanoid female with phenomenal physical and spiritual powers who also turns into a cat that helps run the Bleach equivalent of a magical item shop. It's that in cat form, Yoruichi's voice goes from a babe's to a creepy old man's in no time flat. It weirds out the characters in the show, who all thought Yoruichi was a dude until she revealed her boobtastic form, and admit it: it threw you for a loop when you first heard it, too.
An adorable little black cat that just wants to ruin your life. Nothing personal, of course; he's just helping his protégé Shia learn the ropes of being a demon. The problem, of course, being that Shia is more inclined to make a visitor tea and cookies than trip them on the stairs. Nya also has a hate-hate relationship with Sasha, an angel who appears to coach on the series' heroine Misha— though to be fair, Sasha is incredibly annoying.
For the vast majority of Haruhi, Shamisen is a perfectly normal cat, unless you count that he's hefty despite originating as a stray. Kyon acquired him at the behest of Haruhi, who wanted to include the cat in her amateur film as the familiar of Yuki, who plays a witch. Then Haruhi inadvertently grants Shamisen the ability to speak. The baritone cat turns out to be quite a philosopher. (Also of note: he's a male calico, which is exceedingly rare, and Haruhi names him after an instrument traditionally strung with cat hide, true to her kind and caring self.)
Yeah, it's obvious, but look: Doraemon is one wacko cat...robot...thing. Apparently in the future, cats don't have cat ears. And they have pouches like kangaroos. Doraemon can pull just about any wacky invention you can think of out of said pouch, but it pretty much never works the way it's supposed to. It's a great big circle of fail, really: Doraemon, a malfunctioning robot in the future, is taken in by the Nobita family, who are poor because their ancestor was an idiot. So the robot cat heads back into the past to when that ancestor, Nobita Nobi, was a child in an attempt to help him develop into a productive member of society. Every attempt fails ridiculously, of course. How is this show not depressing?
To be fair, there were a lot of weird cats in Azumanga Daioh. And in the series' continuity, this cat is actually just a weird pillow-plushie thing. But in the insane subconscious of both space cadet Osaka and cat-obsessed athlete Sakaki, said pillow is actually the father of their child genius friend, Chiyo-chan. He levitates, plays baseball, and turns red when he's angry. And he's played by Norio Wakamoto, the former policeman turned voice actor of Hellsing Ultimate's Alexander Anderson and Code Geass' Britannian emperor.
Is it a cat? Is it a bus? Do you need a license to drive it? Would you even get in one? Did it just eat those kids? What's creepy for some is charming for hundreds of thousands, and Hayao Miyazaki's Catbus from My Neighbor Totoro is a prime example. The Catbus is so popular that it got its own short film spinoff, Mei and the Kittenbus— which could also be called Son of Catbus, since it follows the original Catbus' offspring —which screens at the Ghibli Museum in Japan.
Trigun's Kuroneko-sama may not seem all that weird in the first couple of episodes of the series. Sure, he's got kind of a football-head thing going on, but that's just a style choice, right? But then you start to realize...this cat is everywhere. Does it have access to a teleporter? Is it stalking our show's hero, Vash? Could it actually be after Vash's $$60,000,000,000 bounty? Or is it something more philosophical, perhaps a statement on mankind as a lazy observer? Or...you know, maybe it's just a small black cat.
As an added bonus to our lists, each post will be accompanied by a survey to rank readers' thoughts on a specific topic. Starting with the next list, we'll also report the results of that survey. This week, we want to know who ANN readers' favorite crossdresser is. Click the link, pick an answer, and check back later to see how everyone else voted!
This week, it's hot monster mommies and less hot AI-generated light novels.― I Support Falin's Crimes We've long joked on the podcast about the quality of light novel writing, but the news is out that the developers of the RyokoAI project have scraped Shosetsuka ni Narou...are fully machine-generated LNs in our future? Plus: Things get gorier in Kaiju No. 8, the world of yatagarasu politics unfolds...
Each story is like a dark portal into a realm of human sexuality that society usually sweeps under the rug, but I can't look away.― Nude Model delivers on the promise of its lurid title. This manga, consisting of three equally intense short stories, is charged with eroticism and danger, with epiphanies lurking around every corner. Created by Tsubasa Yamaguchi, Nude Model is nothing like her most wel...
Find out about the young star who set the internet aflame and walked away with two medals. Plus: Thousand-Year Door updates, a new HunterxHunter game, and Miku!― Welcome back, folks! As is my wont, I'd like to plug my El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron HD Remaster that went up earlier this week... but I've also got the disappointing news that Megaton Musashi W: Wired finally released in the US la...
Daisuke 'Dice' Tsutsumi shares what it was like to leave Pixar and how his studio will never shy away from honesty in their work, even when honesty isn't pretty.― Director Daisuke "Dice" Tsutsumi contributed to films like Toy Story 3 and Monsters University while simultaneously crafting what became his Academy Award-nominated animated short film, The Dam Keeper. His latest short film, Bottle George,...
Mimori intends to continue voice roles, singing career― Voice actress and singer Suzuko Mimori announced on her Twitter account on Thursday that she is moving to the United States this summer. She acknowledges that the move will mean that her voice work will not necessarily stay the same as before, but that she will strive to continue performing her roles to the best off her ability. She also added ...
Chris and Nick put on their headphones and dust off their vinyl records for a look at this season's guitar-strumming, mic-swinging girl groups.― Chris and Nick put on their headphones and dust off their vinyl records for a look at this season's guitar-strumming, mic-swinging girl groups. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are not the views of Anime News...
I cannot imagine how Square Enix could top themselves after this.― Final Fantasy VII Rebirth initially launched on the last day of February, and if you look at the date of this review's publication, you will immediately be able to discern one thing about this second entry of the FF7 Remake series: It is gargantuan. The first game got plenty of praise (and plenty of flak) for taking the relatively sh...
Anime's first season premiered in 2018― The official website for Kakuriyo -Bed & Breakfast for Spirits-, the television anime of writer Midori Yūma and illustrator Laruha's Kakuriyo Yadomeshi (Afterlife Inn Cooking) light novel series, announced that the series will have a second season in fall 2025, and revealed a teaser visual on Wednesday. The novels' 2023 manga adaptation artist Tsugaru Toba als...
The Manga Guide library expands with six more series, including Trinity Seven -Revision-, Watch Dogs Tokyo, Fed Up With Being the Spoiled Queen's Genius Butler,, and more!― Welcome to Anime News Network's Spring 2024 Manga Guide! You may have seen one of our seasonal Anime Preview Guides, where a team of critics writes up each new anime television premiere as it airs at the beginning of a season. N...
With a new Nintendo Switch port available, even more gamers can experience Enoch's transcendental adventure across the world. How does it fare on Nintendo's portable device?― El Shaddai: Ascension of the Metatron was a curious game when it released in 2011. The world wasn't quite ready for it then, but time (and a PC port) helped people accept it. With a new Nintendo Switch port available, even more...
Manhwa is starting to find its footing in American comic book sphere, but it's not just another version of "manga." Find out what makes Korean comics unique.― The door to English-translated manga opened in the 1980s, and despite some fits and starts, essentially never looked back. Manhwa, or Korean comics, have had a much more troubled journey to popular visibility in English. Around 2006, manhwa be...
The new anime series is far more forthright about the idol and seiyū industry, from maintaining relevance on social media to subsisting on substandard wages.― The new anime series is far more forthright about the idol and seiyū industry, from maintaining relevance on social media to subsisting on substandard wages. Disclaimer: The views and opinions expressed by the participants in this chatlog are...
Ultimately, my biggest problem with Shaman King Flowers is that it mostly just feels like a set-up to a much larger story that has yet to actually happen.― [Warning, this review will contain major spoilers for the ending of Shaman King (2021)] If there's one thing that can be counted on with battle shonen properties, it's that any of them that go on long enough will inevitably get some sequel series...