I would have thought having show about a Nekomimi would be good. The problem is the glass is a quarter full… Although the show may not be as fanservice laden as Kampfer or the first or last episode of Nogizaka Haruka Second Season… I was proven wrong. It did have potential of being a better than average romance harem show, but it didn’t deliver. Why? A few reasons such as inconsistency, character designs and the level of fanservice.
Warning: Slightly not safe for work….
First, a problem I see with Mayoi Neko Overrun is its inconsistency… From the two episodes I watched, the tones are completely different. With episode 2, we are introduced to Nozomi and yes she is very skillful. Then in the third episode, the episode becomes drama packed and just recently, a hot spring episode packed with even more fanservice up to the roof. The problem is that it is not consistent as the tone of the story keeps changing. Now it comes from just being a normal harem anime with average fanservice to a melodrama to a full blown eechi romance anime. No, it’s not the material’s fault, but the problem is that each episode have a different director. It is pretty difficult to keep the consistency of the whole story when we have different directors for each episode. It’s just like Endless Eight when Koyoto Animation and Kadokawa thought it was funny to have different Animation Directors and we knew how that turned out… We have fans complaining that it looked like K-ON! or saying the animation sucked. Having two directors working on different episodes is okay, but having 12 different directors… I don’t know about that one after what happened with Endless Eight and their experimentation.
Second problem… Fanservice… Like mentioned from chaostangent’s taste test on Mayoi Neko Overrun, he mentioned the… well fanservice rather perfectly:
Fifty seconds in: under wear close-up. Sixty seconds in: abuse by an overly arrogant female. Four and a half minutes in: breast jiggle.
I didn’t caught that from the first episode, but I was a lot more careful in the second episode… Few minutes in before the OP, we already have boob groping and a panty shot… After the OP, Nozomi naked and more Gainaxing from Otome, Chise being completely naked, panty shot from Nozomi and it goes on and on… Some examples:
And guess what… It is not the worse of the fanservice… Episode 4 presents completely naked people…
The problem with this show is that as with all the typical harem anime “cliches” out there, Mayoi Neko Overrun certainty have fell into the ditch with the rest of the harem anime that are often fanservice laden. Fanservice with this type that is over done too many times become very distracting and ruin my overall thoughts about the whole show. This applies to all Anime I watch. While Nogizaka Haruka First Season had some fanservice, I never seen that many panty shots and Gainaxing, which made it less distracting and made the show more enjoyable. In contrast to the Second Season, the opposite happen although there were some episodes with no fanservice at all that I enjoyed. However, the first and last episode was horrible because of this… too much unnecessary fanservice! It may depend on the person, but I care more about the story, not some fanservice shot that doesn’t need to be there. Also, not all fanservice is bad… The sexual kind gets very bad in my opinion when it is overdone and in this case, I think so.
Character Designs… I’m guessing they are all right, but however, I would consider Fumino a run off the mill Tsundere as she is very violent and stuff… However, it gets a bit too out of hand and as always, very tiring… I can’t remember how many times she said “DIE TWICE” or something like that… Although the main lead isn’t as wimpy as some leads from other harem anime, the problem is well… not having an established harem and stuff…
In conclusion, Mayoi Neko Overrun is a run off the mill Ecchi Romance Harem and doesn’t go beyond that to improve itself. It was a promising story, but the problem is that the story’s tone is all over the place and there is too much fanservice. If they kept the fanservice to the level as the first season of Nogizaka Haruka, it would have turned out okay… but it didn’t as it fell into the pool of cliches that past and recent harem Anime fell in. In the end of the day, it is a “your milage may vary” anime. If you like the typical fanservicy romance harem anime with a nekomimi in it, this is the Anime for you… but not for me since I rather watch something more worthwhile without the ridiculous amount of fanservice that I can enjoy without being distracted by Gainaxing and stuff like it…
However, I did like the story in Episode 3, but it wasn’t enough for me to continue watching it… so yeah…
Some people I know (two) have told me that episode 4 was the death knell of the show and they dropped it because of that. When I first saw the screenshots from the first episode, something told me it’d be aiming for generic territory and I didn’t explore the show because of that. Now, after following the few blogs that talked about the show, it looks like I’m not missing much here.
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I guess you weren’t the only one… I was looking ahead and lurked on RandomC and saw… Yes, Episode 4 was just… bad… For some people however think its good, but I don’t know what to look at the series after Episode 4… More of the same I think… and yes, you are not missing much…
I think I’ll use the term “too tsundere” to express my dislike for Fumino. I realize the show plays on that but it’s overbearing to see her lose control that many times even if it’s in a comedy show. The excessive use of it becomes repetitive rather quickly. That rule applies for many shows.
The hot springs episode is something shows usually save for the last eps or for the specials. I don’t know what this is doing here since stuffing it there after the “serious” ep from last week messes up whatever they were building, now it’s back to generic comedy/harem level it was before.
Yeah, episode 4 was just bad. The recent episode is better though and the reason is that this series has 12 directors and the director for episode 3 is known for gags and whatnot. Hopefully the others are not that horrible.
That is a problem… if the episode quality aren’t consistent, it won’t look as good since the good episodes are mixed in with the bad episodes. If it is half and half, the good and bad episodes will cancel out. Because of the inconsistency, I didn’t continue, but if it does change in the later episodes, I might revive it in the future in an editorial post.
Exactly. However, the positive thing is that it does keep things interesting and unexpected. After I watched episode 3 which in my opinion was just amazing, I would never expect something like episode 4. Well, from what I heard, the remaining directors are quite good so lets hope that they can make it consistent while keeping it interesting.
Not Really, The Thing is that one director was used per episode.