Red Cat Ramen, episode 1

Our Human Girl gets hired as back-room support staff at a cross between a ramen shop and a cat café. That is, the cats run the place, and the customers are there as much to see them as to eat the food. The human’s primary job is grooming the cats to reduce the amount of hair that gets into the food.

Not much to it, really, but it’s not angsty or shouty, and they’ve hired some familiar voices for the cats. Boss cat sounds exactly like gruff detective Kei Matoba from Cop Craft, which may be too distracting for me. The waitress is voiced by Rie Kugimiya, and the shy tiger by Saori Hayami, but neither performance does much to make the characters interesting, which I blame on the writing. Surprisingly, Our Human Girl’s voice is brand new to anime, and does a good job of making her appealing.

Verdict: I wasn’t expecting much, and it didn’t deliver much, but I made it all the way to the end.

Dungeon People, episode 1

Simplified Cute Girls Doing Simplified Cute Things In A Simplified Cute Dungeon. The minimal art style is straight from the manga, with the dungeon’s CG nature mostly being revealed by the camera movements. In a twist from the usual formula, Our Thief-Class Heroine is the emotionless one, while Our Legal-Loli Dungeon Boss is ultra-perky. Their voice actresses are also subverting expectations, with their most recent visible roles being Shuna/Marcille/Animalia and Lavine/Romantica/Lady Black, respectively. M.A.O will be along soon, along with some very familiar male voices (1, 2, 3, 4).

Verdict: off to a good start.

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