Winter 2019 First Impressions – My Roommate is a Cat

A shy novelist adopts a cute stray cat and starts to slowly open himself to the world. Both his and the cat’s point of view are included in each story. – ANN

Streaming: Crunchyroll and Funimation

Episodes: 12

Source: Manga

Episode Summary: Subaru is a novelist whose parents recently passed away in a tragic accident. Since then he’s become withdrawn and only really interacts with his editor – when he needs to. One day, while visiting his parents’ grave, a stray cat leaps from the shadows and pounces on Subaru’s sashimi, and the author has an epiphany: his next novel will feature a murder mystery where a cat is the culprit!

Subaru brings the cat home and starts to take care of it while continuing to indulge in some of his bad habits as a writer – neglecting sleep, forgetting to eat, and generally just losing touch with reality until the completion of the manuscript. When he passes out from exhaustion, the cat’s presence turns out to be a blessing. In the aftermath, he finds out that he might have eaten some of the cat’s food in his dire state. The cat, for their part, can’t understand why this particular human is so strange.

Impressions: Lately I seem to have gotten a bit of a reputation again for “taking things too seriously,” which is a phrase that gets tossed-around when writers like me really dig into what we’re writing about to relate it to real-life in some way. I’ve made it pretty clear that I write from life and believe that art is an offshoot of our cultural beliefs whether conscious or not. It doesn’t mean that everyone who watches an anime is going to want to view it through that lens, but I personally find that it’s important to consider.

After a string of very heavy anime premieres and some tough-to-write reviews, though, I find that sometimes the best medicine is to watch something that doesn’t read to me as being very serious and doesn’t demand a lot of analysis. For some folks, vegging-out to exciting hack-and-slash entertainment is their favorite way to decompress; for others, slapstick comedy scratches that particular itch. For me, I tend to gravitate towards things that are cute, funny, and mildly bittersweet. Major bonus if there are cute kids, attractive guys, food, or animals involved. Some past examples of my fluffy faves are Sweetness & Lightning, Chi’s Sweet Home, Flying Witch, and Restaurant to Another World. My Roommate is a Cat looks to be another anime series in the same tradition of offering feel-good emotions via various forms of humorous cuteness.

The human protagonist is probably the biggest hurdle this episode has to clear, because his grumpy lonerism is greatly informed by a tragic loss and his attitude sometimes crosses the line into standoffishness. Loss and grief are tough motivations, because they affect everyone differently. There are very few “wrong ways” to navigate the complexity of those emotions, unless those expressions cause harm in some manner. Subaru’s dislike of answering the phone or being around crowds reads very authentically to me, while his lashing-out toward his editor and neighbor feel more informed by “reclusive male genius” tropes and habits. It’s a very small part of the episode, but it does make his character a little bit more difficult to relate to.

On the other hand, this episode becomes more focused on cat-ownership and its related antics as the minutes tick by, and that’s where I feel like the story hits its stride. Subaru is inexperienced with cat ownership, so his editor (who’s used to providing him with research materials anyway) inundates him with books, magazines, and even bags of cat food to get him started. Being an enthusiastic cat owner myself, I definitely know the excitement that comes when friends embark on that same exciting quest, as well as the undeniable urge to bond over the activities of the little creatures that share our living spaces.

Animal behavior is also a large component of the humor, especially the mis-match in comprehension between Subaru and his new furry friend. In the episode, cats are briefly compared to gangsters and their owners to gang bosses, accounting for the strange habits cats have of leaving “tributes” (sometimes dead birds or mice) for their owners to find. While I suspect that’s not exactly accurate, it does provide an opportunity for a few gags when Subaru assumes the cat is attempting to kill him by leaving bits of kibble outside his office door. In reality, the cat has started to notice Subaru working himself to death and wants to make sure that he’s eating.

I think possibly the best part of the episode is that there’s a series of scenes near the end where we witness a few key moments through the eyes of the cat. We learn that they’re a survivor of the streets and often went hungry because of it. To the cat, food is a precious resource and to see Subaru not eating any of it is inconceivable. While the reasoning for the cat’s motivations and inherently independent spirit are somewhat tragic (content warning: kitty has come face-to-face with starvation and retains a bit of trauma because of it), the glimpse into the internal life of the series’ other protagonist is a fun way to illustrate that, while we might not really understand what drives our animal friends, somehow we can still carve out a loving life beside them.

This episode is mostly fluff entertainment (pun very intended), and has a distinctive heartwarming streak that hits me in just the right spot. The opening theme animation features a short segment where several characters from the show fly by with their various cats in tow, and this feline bombardment is just the kind of material I need after a long day of work or reviewing darker or more emotionally-frustrating anime. It doesn’t really aim high in terms of storytelling or visuals, but in the case of “comfort food” entertainment that isn’t really what I’m looking for. It’s nice, sometimes, to just enjoy the life of a man and his cat.

Pros: Solid, low-stakes, heartwarming entertainment. A lot of humor for pet-owners.

Cons: The human protagonist exhibits some rough interactions with society at large.

Grade: B