Nine lives might not be enough to survive this catfight!
Creative Staff
Writer/Artist: Yuji Iwahara
Translation: Amy Forsyth
Adaptation: Amy Forsyth
What They Say
At Matabi Academy, students are allowed to bring their pet cats to the dorms. For Yumi Hayakawa, whose favorite hobby is making clothes for her kitty Kansuke, Matabi seems like a sure bet. After all, nothing can possibly go wrong with her best friend at her side! But on the first day of school, the two find themselves face-to-face with a murderous demonic minion on campus! Will Yumi and Kansuke be able to defend themselves and their school against an ancient cat demon's thirst for vengeance?
The Review!
Technical
“Cat Paradise” is a solid production that sticks to Yen’s usual standards of quality with good paper stock and solid blacks. The cover retains the art from the Japanese volume one, featuring Yumi and Kansuke in his battle form set against a field of red. The title logo has some issues. The C in ‘cat’ is designed to look like a cat with the word “paradise” in small print set inside the A. While this looks fine for the cover, on the spine it’s tiny and difficult to read. The back cover has a small illustration of one of the lead cats, Musashimaru. The first eight pages are reproduced in color in the first printing of the English edition. The title page features a nice standalone picture of Yumi and Kasuke, with Kansuke as his usual cat self. A page of translation notes and two author’s note pages round out this volume. The usual school setting honorifics of ‘senpai’ and ‘-kun’ are left intact in the dialog but Yen doesn’t offer an explanation or translation of the terms. Yen translates sound effects in-panel, with a literal translation, and then into English onomatopoeia when it first appears on a page. The literal translation is an odd choice as it has little meaning for the average reader.
Yuji Iwahara, known for “Chikyu Misaki” and “King of Thorn”, has a clean and attractive art style. He uses very little screentone and delivers a pen and ink quality in his art. Characters are often drawn with big expressions on their faces and their poses are dramatic and full of motion. His panel layout flows well and is easy to follow. Backgrounds mesh with the art rather than stand apart from it. The characters have a broad range of variation in their designs. The girls and young boys have a rounded, cherubic look, while adult characters are more angular. The real standouts are the cats, which are some of the best looking manga cats I have ever seen. They move and emote in a very genuine way.
Content:
Yumi Hayakawa admits the only reason she chose to enroll in Matabi Academy is that students are allowed to bring one of their pet cats with them. She happily stuffs her cat, Kansuke, into her luggage for the journey. Kansuke, as you can guess, was not exactly pleased with that or with Yumi’s hobby of dressing him up in little outfits she knits for him. He’s too tough to put up with the cute kitty act. Yumi may not be the brightest girl but at least she means well. As she meets her fellow students and becomes acquainted with the cute class secretary, Akifuji, she accidentally incurs the wrath of the vice principal and is forced into chore duty. Kansuke isn’t having an easy time of it either and ends up in a fight with the big cat on campus, Musashimaru.
If the trials of being a new kid on campus aren’t enough, Yumi is suddenly attacked by a strange demon creature obsessed with hair. Kansuke wishes for power to protect Yumi from their demon attacker, like a good shounen protagonist, and his wish is granted by the spirit of the princess that originally lived on the grounds the school sits on. The twist is that Kansuke and Yumi must work as a pair, based on their own special talents. Yumi’s new powers manifest as a ball of yarn that knits into an outfit which transforms Kansuke into a cat boy to fight against the demon. How very appropriate. Her new powers also grant Yumi the ability to understand what Kansuke, and all the other cats on campus, say.
It turns out the campus is actually located inside a giant barrier created by an ancient princess to trap the spirit beasts that prayed on humans. One of those was Kaen, an ancient cat demon that destroyed the country of Futakago. The founder of Matabi Academy was able to finally seal away Kaen beneath the school. In the event the seal is broken, the members of the student council and their cats are the chosen ones tasked with making sure the spirit beasts and demon Kaen don’t wreak havoc on the world. There are a bunch of shounen tropes here that the author admits to, and he plays them up even while the characters remain deadly serious about the whole demon fighting business. The characters are, so far, fairly stereotypical. Yumi is a bit klutzy; Akifuji is the cool kid; Kansuke is a bit of a punk.
As another demon attacks, Yumi learns more about a fellow classmate, the student council vice president, Kotori. Kotori is Musashimaru’s owner and their unique fighting power is certainly... unique. Her negotiations with the giant pig spirit end as you would expect – not very well. Kotari says that the members of the student council are all problem children, making me wonder what Yumi’s problem might be. It appears the other pairs will be further developed and get to show off their own powers in later volumes, as Kaen and his followers make their move. There’s also the lingering question of why Kansuke and Yumi were granted their powers, because the ancient prophesy said there would be only six pairs and they make the seventh.
In Summary
How much do you love cats? It remains to be seen if any of Iwahara's usual plot twists will come into play in this story. Even if it remains a monster-of-the-week story, the lively artwork and fun banter between Umi and Kansuke make “Cat Paradise” a worthwhile read in the school kids vs. demons genre.
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