English Dub Review: Chainsmoker Cat “Even We Run Around in December, Nya”

Overview:

Yani expects a lonely birthday, unaware that Imoko is planning a surprise party for her. Elsewhere, Yani’s landlord becomes trapped in a foul time loop.

Our Take(Spoilers):

A piece of advice: if you’re planning on throwing a surprise party for someone, you should probably make sure they are coming to wherever the party is being held. At first, I felt bad that Yani didn’t have anyone who wanted to spend time with her on her birthday. Then I saw that her friends and sister were having a surprise party for her at a restaurant and felt better. Finally, I noticed that she wasn’t there or on her way because no one thought to invite her to the place where the party was being held. Now, I was back to feeling bad for her because they forgot to invite her to her own party.

All of that happened before the opening credits played, so you can imagine how the episode went. But first, I have to express a minor annoyance about how time seemingly works in this episode. Yomuko is walking by Yani’s apartment complex when she comments about the first air of spring, but then one segment later we’re seeing Yani’s Christmas list to Santa. Maybe I heard incorrectly because the rest of the episode had the correct time structure. After that, we went from Christmas to New Year’s, which makes sense.

After that, the poor landlord got caught in a time loop. For a second, I thought it was a dream or something because he pounded Yani into the mochi and killed her. But when he kept reliving it and others kept dying, I started to figure it out. What bugged me about this segment was, of course, that the time loop came to an end once he did something majorly embarrassing. He was brought in by the police after pounding the mochi with his junk out. It was kind of funny, I suppose, because Yani almost gave in to her cat instincts with a dangly “toy”.

I think that I need to view this in the same genre of show as those ones that are essentially just “cute anime girls do things”. Only in this case, they are catgirls that are typically doing gross things. I feel torn because while I’m not super into a show having ecchi scenes just to have them, I would rather those than all the gross-out stuff we currently get.