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

Episode 7

It finally happened! This show finally managed to truly bore me. It says a lot when you drop most of the show's comedy and replace it with probably one of the most by-the-numbers setups I've watched in quite a while. Nothing is exciting here, nothing generally interesting, and while there were one or two payoffs that felt decently written, all of it is predicated on the most bland setups. I'm not saying I want the show to rely heavily on the cat fucking comedy crutch that it was using before but at least I had something to say about that. Plus, the show established that it could be funny when it allowed the characters to bounce on each other in more low-stakes environments. Here, everything is just devoid of life, which is fitting when you consider about a third of this episode was spent fighting lifeless CGI skeletons.

It is hard to be emotionally invested in something when there is no effort to establish the reasons. Reiss wants to kill the randomly generic Earl in charge of the land because he thinks he killed his wife and drains the mana from Lily and Feri from the last episode to do it. This is a situation where the dude saw an opportunity and took it, but the show is very vague about the details. We don't know why or how Reiss thinks that the Earl had anything to do with his wife's death. She's buried on their property so a body was returned to him at some point, but no flashbacks or real explanation for what happened. The scene where one of the skeletons that was brought back to life confronts him and it turns out to be his wife would have been pretty impactful if we had any context to their relationship. Did he know that he accidentally resurrected the body of his dead wife amongst the dozens of skeletons that he brought back? Where are all of the other adventurers in this town?

The one positive I will give this episode is the payoff with the truth potion from the last episode. Setting that up with the tea was a pretty decent reveal, even though I saw it coming. I don't want to give it much credit because it's such a convenient tool introduced to resolve this plot point. It was found in a chest the day before all of these transpired. While there was a decent attempt at a narrative payoff, it still comes off as lazy. When I try to analyze this plot or get invested in it, at best, I'm bored and at worst it just doesn't work. There aren't any moments of comedy or levity throughout the episode and everything is treated surprisingly seriously. I don't know how long this arc or side quest was in the original material, but it feels like they were just checking off a bunch of boxes in a video game quest, and that came at the expense of the characters feeling empty because they're not given anything to do outside of just beating the bad guy.

I mentioned a few times that the show has the potential for more serious moments with its occasional unique setups and payoffs. However, this is not the way to go about it. If they are leaning into generic plot points associated with this genre, they must spruce up the in-between moments to make things feel more entertaining and a lot less dry. This is the worst show to play all of this straight.

Rating: