Kemono Michi: Rise Up

Episode 1-2-3-4-5

There's a song that keeps running through my head whenever I watch Kemono Michi: Rise Up!: I love cats, I love kitties/Squeeze them into itty-bitties. While my sisters and I may be the only three people who remember the Tiny Toon Adventures movie (and Elmira, who sings that song in it), it's hard not to at least partially equate Genzo with her, because, wow, does he love animals. Like, a possibly unhealthy amount, and that's coming from someone with five cats and a dog. In fact, animals and his fondness for them are basically his raison d'être – not only is his entire pro wrestling persona built around it, but he's only wrestling to make money so that he can fulfill his lifelong dream of having a pet shop. He even brings his small dog Hiroyuki with him into the ring, which seems pretty dangerous for everyone concerned.

In that respect, it makes perfect sense that he'd have a…bad reaction when he's summoned to another world by a princess who promptly asks him to kill animals. In Genzo's mind, a three-headed beast dog is just a fuzzy puppy with a few more ears to rub, so there's no way in hell he's going to do what she asks. In fact, when he finds out that no one keeps pets in his new world, he decides that that's going to be his new mission: save all the demon beasts, domesticate them, and open everyone's eyes to the joys of fur babies. And you know, I can respect that – not only is he not interested in someone else's concept of heroism, but he's willing to put his money where his mouth is and actually do it. Sure, everyone thinks he's crazy or a pervert (or a crazy pervert), but since Genzo only cares what the animals think of him, it really is just water off a (demon)duck's back.

As much fun as all of this is, the show could have gotten stale very quickly had it stuck to that theme strictly. Fortunately the series does know that, and before too many episodes have passed, it's really become a parody of the basic isekai tropes, with a focus on the specific “summoned hero” subgenre. Given that the source manga for the show is by Natsume Akatsuki of Konosuba fame, it's no surprise that the parodic elements are handled with aplomb. They aren't really doing anything new, per se, but the fact that the hero is an animal-obsessed pro wrestler does give it the spice it needs to not feel like a retread, although if you've read both Konosuba and Combatants Will Be Dispatched!, you'll notice that Akatsuki doesn't actually have much variety in his character types; in this case, they're just a little mixed up, with wolf girl Shigure filling the Kazuma role, Genzo standing in for Darkness and so on down the line.

Even with this familiar cast of characteristics, however, the story manages to keep things entertaining. Each of the first five episodes has a special something that makes it work, whether that's Genzo's rival MAO knitting his face on a scarf as he tries to cope with the disappearance of his rival (no mean feat with only a skein of blue yarn), Genzo showing up with his new best friend the salamander curled around him, or learning that the princess he suplexed in episode one is now known far and wide as “the buttocks princess” for getting her nether regions displayed when she dared to suggest that Genzo hurt animals. Even running gags largely work, such as how no one can quite figure out that calling Genzo “Demon Beast Slayer” will land them in a world of pain or how Shigure keeps selling this one guy's super expensive swords every time he gets tossed through a wall. In fact, one of my favorite gags in these episodes is a running one – the Giant Ant…person who seems to have joined forces with Genzo. They first showed up in episode one at the very end, and they've stuck around ever since then, moving in with Genzo and Shigure long before Hanako and Carmilla wandered in, and this week they even save the day when Gang tries to kidnap Hiroyuki to get back at Genzo for his humiliating belly rub in the first episode. Clearly the Ant is not to be messed with.

It is interesting to note that episode five this week does a lot of calling back to episode one. Not only do we see the return of Gang as a more major character, but he's there in deliberate response to having been pinned down and pet in the premier, desperate to get his vengeance. There's also an almost complete retelling of Genzo's summoning from his wrestling rival MAO's point of view, culminating in MAO's depression that he never got to complete the match (and maybe finally beat the one man he never has) before MAO himself gets summoned by the disciples of evil, who believe they're summoning “another world's demon king,” a deliberate play on MAO's ring name, which can be written that way. (It actually stands for “Macadamia Ogre,” but whatever.) And perhaps most interesting of all is the fact that when Genzo goes after Gang for his attempted kidnapping of Hiroyuki, the moneylender sees him throw down some wrestling moves and clearly begins to see dollar signs in his eyes. Since Genzo wants money to open his pet shop, this throws him right back where he was before he was summoned: wrestling to raise money for his furry friends.

There are some less than wonderful elements of the show, most strikingly the decidedly sexual angle placed on the whole Gang thing, which makes it seem like he's being sexually assaulted. Carmilla and Hanako don't bring much to the show as characters, at least not so far, and feel like they perhaps could have been left out, and the animation can be underwhelming at times. But on the whole this is a lot of fun as it gives its genre its own special flavor, and sometimes you really don't need more than a hefty dose of goofiness to make a story worthwhile.

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Kemono Michi: Rise Up is currently streaming on Funimation.