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REVIEW: Nekopara

You got a lot of smaller sites, sure, but most people under 30 get their reviews from YouTubers, streamers, and social media influencers these days, and ecchi shows are pretty big with them. Guys and girls with millions of followers like Gigguk, Noble, Nux Taku, Akidearest, and Connor and their fanbase generally love those kinds of shows. It's either a generational thing, since younger people are more sexually liberated in general and legacy media tends to be run and aimed at an older generation, or there's a large disconnect between legacy media critics and consumers. The same thing happens with video games all the time where a game gets trashed by all the legacy media websites, but every major streamer or YouTuber loves it and says it's amazingly fun, and vice versa when something gets high marks from legacy sites but every major influencer says its not fun and calls it bad.

It's either a generational thing, since younger people are more sexually liberated in general

It’s a bit of a stretch to call this pornless porn “sexually liberated”.

I'd honestly like to know what people would make of things like Mnemosyne or Interspecies Reviewer.

If you want to see what happens when even a fan thinks seriously about Nekopara, this article about the economic oppression of catgirls is hilarious. https://www.animefeminist.com/the-workers-nekopara-a-call-to-arms-against-nekonomic-exploitation/

I'm extremely leftist and besides ONE CHARACTER I don't see how anything else in this is considered "ecchi". The anime as a stand-alone is not ecchi. It was a story about family, if anything. The cat "sisters" loving each other. the writer clearly came in here with a bias based on prior knowledge of the franchise and that's obviously influenced the review.

Kougeru wrote:

I'm extremely leftist and besides ONE CHARACTER I don't see how anything else in this is considered "ecchi". The anime as a stand-alone is not ecchi. It was a story about family, if anything. The cat "sisters" loving each other. the writer clearly came in here with a bias based on prior knowledge of the franchise and that's obviously influenced the review.

In the review the writer mentions elements that were ecchi, such as the camera positioning on crotches, or a character kneading another's boobs enough to cause an orgasm. That all sounds pretty ecchi to me, even without knowing it's based on a porn game.
It can be a "story about family" while still being an ecchi show.


For my part I didn't watch the show (not my type of thing) but I did look at bits and pieces and I have to say... Cacao is adorable. She seemed to be treated a lot better than in other fanservice shows; I expected there to be some creepy scenes of her but what (little) I saw was very respectful. I really liked when she was hiding under the box.
Also, the episode where they tried to tell... Scary stories? I think? Was amusing at times.

Interesting discussion in here, I appreciate seeing a few well thought out viewpoints. I don't know how this site works or how contributors pick their topics but personally I feel like the purveyors of modern "review" culture should consider the actual value in a review like this.

I guess it can be interesting to read the views of someone that clearly dislikes the genre of the thing they're reviewing, but at the same time what does it really accomplish?

I generally dislike long running shounen series, I wouldn't want to read my own review of One Piece. Roger Ebert was historically quite harsh on games, I don't think I'd enjoy reading his review of Doom II.

I guess that last point is the crux of the issue for me. You couldn't expect Ebert to grasp the things that make Doom or Halo a classic like pace, level design, or technical innovation, and I can't really expect someone that dislikes ecchi anime to give a worthwhile review, because they tend to just not "get" it. Yeah you might see yourself as an intellectual and say "oh not me, I get why boys like boobs" but you're actually missing all the nuance that the people that do "get" it see. It's all quite presumptuous in my opinion. I don't "get" why people love Naruto and fairy tale and one piece. I can say "oh they just like constant mindless action" but I'm not so prideful to claim I "get" shounen, because I clearly don't. I'm quite sure there's a lot more to it, it's just not for me and that's ok.

Anyway, I guess what I'm saying is the reviewers tend to get defensive over this topic when people say "this article sucks, you always hate this genre", and it's completely understandable why, but I feel there's a little truth in the criticism from readers insofar as a reviewer without a full love or grasp of a specific topic isn't really providing a very useful product in my estimation. It's like having an expert and fan of Renaissance paintings review modern surrealist works right after they told you "I hate modern surrealist art".

*PS I mean no disrespect to this review as far as it's technical merits go, it is very well written and the arguments well made. I just feel like ANN and the rest of the world in general would prevent a lot of headaches if they stopped trying to review a catgurl anime weighed against Showa Genroku Rakugo Shinju or Evangelion or whatever, and weighed it against the history of its own genre like DxD or Eiken (lol) or some such. Seems more fair and useful that way. At least to me. Ebert used to review kids movies against kids movies, not Citizen Kane.