UlUltimateKud
December 24, 2017
Recommended
"Man, if this had hentai..." I am a big fan of Nekopara. Really big fan of a fetish that's incomprehensible by normal humans. I bought all three volumes of nekopara in a heartbeat. When i heard of a new OVA in the works, I immediately jumped in joy, I even went and gave the last $10 of my wallet to this OVA. Fast forward two to three months later, on the perfect day of release, it finally came. Nekopara on christmas day. However after watching it, i have some doubts as to who this series is for and the production behind it. Lets take a lookat our review of Nekopara and see what went well and what didn't.
- TL:DRs and conclusion at the bottom in case if it gets too wordy.
Moving onto design, my first impressions were hopeful. The beautiful blue sky paired with lush green grass that brought out how bright and shiny the brand new cafe was immediately gave signs of great production. However a quick inspection when pausing the video immediately killed off any hype of Shaft making this.
The cinematography was bad. Really bad. Panning reveals tons of jitter and stutter across vertical, horizontal and pulling. Normally I would overlook this section and write it off as fine if it only suffers from minor stutters (due to framerate, most commonly found in vertical pans) but this was so distracting throughout the 1 hour movie that I knew i had to write about it. My first conclusion was my bad internet or my bad computer, so immediately tried it on my desktop after re configuring the internet and it still posed such an issue. It felt less like a movie and more of a comic book flipped at high speeds every time it pans through chocola's face. POVs and Angles are fine, nothing too special to write about, with typical angles across the catgirl's faces without much variation.
Character design was good but a few changes needs to be made. Outlines are sharp and edgy, especially across more complicated scenes like Vanilla's hair where her white hair paired with sharp edgy lines are extremely annoying for that one or two seconds. Smoother lines would be much appreciated. Clothes are well designed, still stayed mostly true with the original but certain aspects like how the clothes do not dull or darken when splashed with water or how the bells on their neck lack sparkle and bling, rendering it flat looking or how it lacks some texture at close examination. Hairs have good colour, i like how vanilla's hair isn't rendered as white but takes note of the yellowish lighting environment, giving it a sort of beige look but i would as per usual wish it had a bit more shine to it, instead of looking too monotonous, even when it isn't. Eye design is great, quite a lot of detail when focused on individual face and retains certain degree of shades even under further distances. Skin tones are perfect, giving off a nice reddish yellow glow rather than the eerie white skin tone that some are infamous for. A slight gribe would be, maybe make the skin tone slightly more pale when the person is sick, somewhat that guy looks very healthy.
Moving over to architectural and environmental design, this is where it scores very well. Grass and skies look nicely saturated, brick tiles give off a beautiful red tone like it's brand new. I love how they made the cafe look brand new without resorting to HDR style look where they overexaggerate shadows and detail but instead just went to make the scene clean and bright, maybe some issues with how porcelain looks a bit dull. In fact I think it made literally everything brand new, which isn't bad per say. There's quite a lot of detail within these building and objects too. Lighting wise, well done. Afternoon light looks a tad bit romantic with the very very slight reddish tint with a warm hue, excellent work. Evening light just seems to exaggerate on the afternoon light but slightly darker, not an issue at all. Night lighting looks cool and fadish, perfect for an eerie scene, although i think it's a little too bright at some scenes like the town.I think the only scene that didn't quite do as consistently is in the aquarium scene, which imo is too reddish and would prefer skin tones to look a bit more green, and maybe slight dimmer.
I think that's enough of design, moving to story, that's where this grading may go both ways. It's a great summary for a nekopara. It didn't add anything extra and that's good. However one big flaw that affects first time viewers is the lack of a story. It seems to jump around quite a lot, lacking direction, there's no story flow. It's hard to love nekopara if you can't really understand anything at all. This is bad to say since it feels so random and hard to keep track of and everything seems kind of boring with scenes like spending time in an aquarium or an amusement park. And as for a lot viewers out there who hoped for nekopara ova to be the volume 3.5 of nekopara, this is disappointing, since there's nothing new in here. A lot of the scenes could have done much better, like how they could hold on to the police scene much longer to hold suspense rather than poof, the owner somehow manages to run while feeling like shit. There was no development in the story at all but if what you are looking for is a summary, this is fantastic.
Moving to character development, or the lack thereof, i say for first time viewers, unless you are a big fan of slice of life, and are used to cliche cute characters, this is going to be boring. The characters have no sense of elaboration and development, even the opening of the movie lacked any elaboration or introduction, at most a 10 second cut scene of a rainy day. If i were a first time watcher, i have a hard time having any further emotional connection or love for these characters. But I'm not. And as a huge fan of nekopara, I doubt there's any need for intros or development since I already knew who i liked most and knew who everyone is. I am already emotionally connected to them. And this serves as a further enforcement for my connection by just being able to see them.
Edit: Yeah it seems fixed now so here's my edited review.
Edit: Audio has been fixed, it sounds tons better. I originally complained about the sharp vocals and the lack of bass in anything but i corrected it. Now it veers towards a warmer tone now, at least no harsh treble and chocola and vanilla's voice is super warm, very smooth. It isn't as exciting as other animes in audio as those tend to have sharper crisper tone while this is a very smooth mellow tone. Frankly I like this a lot better as it's easier to listen to. Background audio is non existent and makes every scene sound dead. Even in the city, it felt like I was listening to it from a voice booth than being in the city. There is slightly worse separation in terms of vocals between male and female but I would gladly take that over the more fatiguing sound of a girl screeching and clawing my eardrums. And to be fair, you can still hear a difference, just a very very small quibble. Overall i love the sound style from the anime, it's just more comfortable to listen to for a one hour movie than most anime which i can barely watch for over twenty minutes. Good job.
Visual novels has its flaws. It can't deliver action. Everything is a standstill, just a picture and lots of words. This anime and to its millions of booby jigglers, serves as a celebration to be finally able to see your characters smiling, dancing, walking about or even doing simple gestures. For all its flaws that i mentioned, all the way to its fundamentals, this is an anime i truly love. I do not care about the story, or the art or the sound. All i care is being able to finally see my favorite characters again. I hardly see $26 as a worthy investment to first time watcher, heck, i doubt this is worth $5. If nekopara is something you truly want to see take off, something you have spent hours on, this anime, in whatever form, will never be a disappointment. But if you want something different or if you are looking to buy into a very weird fetish, you are better served with the visual novel.
Reviewer notes:
- Cinematography is really bad, lot of jitter and stutter in panning
- POVs are stale and lack variation
- Artwork is mostly well done but certain features like outlining looks jarring
- Story lacks direction and seems to be very random
- Character has no development or intro (may not be as necessary depending)
- Audio is very thin while lacking background audio for immersion
