Beheneko: The Elf-Girl's Cat is Secretly an S-Ranked Monster!

Episode 11

This show is not sticking the landing. I will give the show credit for the effort to get me invested in the emotional stakes. The comedy continues to take a backseat to the incredibly generic plot. While the show isn't taking itself too seriously, it still feels like a slog. The problem is that bridging the comedic moments with the emotionally heartfelt doesn't work.

The conversation between Aria and their mother is nice and works in a vacuum, but it doesn't go far enough to make me care as the conversation is predicated on nonsensical things. A mother worrying about their daughter becoming an adventurer is solid, but considering how adventurers are treated in this world, it's hard to feel the worry that she had for Aria going off to fight. The only thing that we see adventurers do is occasionally take dangerous jobs or explore dungeons at their own pace. The show never really hyped up any major sense of danger, so I can't empathize with the mom about feeling worried that something could happen to her when she goes out and fights.

Aria worrying about her mother taking on a role in this war makes a little bit more sense because it's established that she was never really a fighter. Still, when asked how her mother got the respectable position that she has, we learn that she just randomly acquired a super powerful skill out of nowhere. They try to make it seem like this skill was born out of a desperate desire to get strong to protect those she cares about, but that's not how the scene plays out. If anything, the scene is played up more as a joke, which once again makes it hard for me to empathize with that sense of fear.

It just doesn't feel like anyone is in danger in this show because things just work out for all of the main characters one way or another. Even when the show tries to foreshadow a threat or some danger, we immediately take care of it with a power-up or a side character that has never shown a moment of weakness. I called that Amazon being a spy in disguise as soon as we saw her, but it didn't amount to anything because she just got caught and taken out with no fanfare. The scene plays out like that was all part of the plan. For now, it has no payoff.

The show is almost over and I feel like I'm just watching things happen. I'm not invested in anything going on because it still feels like the show is just dragging itself through the plot points. We're in the middle of a big battle with a bunch of CGI demons attacking the Elfland but why should I think that anything bad will happen? The villain has barely been built up as a major threat, our leads have barely suffered any pushback and even when they did, there were various optional ways that we can take care of things. I'm left wondering what exactly I'm supposed to latch onto.

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