My Bride is a Mermaid, Samurai Harem: Asu no Y, Heaven's Lost Property, And Yet the Town Moves, Big Windup!
Nyan Koi!(にゃんこい!, lit. "Meow Love!") is a Japanese manga series written and illustrated by Sato Fujiwara. It started serialization on Flex Comix's free web comic FlexComix Blood on August 10, 2007. An anime adaptation premiered on October 1, 2009 in Japan. The series has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks and released in North America with English subtitles on December 14, 2010, and dubbed in English on December 31, 2013 by Seraphim Digital.
Jyunpei Kousaka is a second-year high school student who is allergic to cats, and because of this he hates the sight of them. As luck would have it, his high school crush, Kaede Mizuno, absolutely adores cats. One day, while walking home from school, Jyunpei kicks an empty can and unfortunately breaks the local neko-jizō-sama (guardian deity of cats). He finds he can now understand what cats are saying, including his family's own ill-tempered cat, Nyamsus. However, if he does not grant 100 wishes to cats, he will turn into a cat himself and die from his own allergy.
Human characters
Jyunpei Kousaka(高坂 潤平,Kōsaka Junpei)
Voiced by: Shintarō Asanuma (Japanese); Connor Leach (English)Jyunpei is the protagonist of Nyan Koi! who has a chronic allergy and, thereby, resentment of cats. Ironically, everyone around him seems to love cats, including his mother and sister (which does not help his predicament). To complicate matters, he accidentally destroys the statue of a cat deity, and to atone for it, he must make use of his new-found ability of communicating with cats to fulfill the requests of one hundred cats. If he does not atone properly, he will be transformed into a cat, and die due to his allergy. Furthermore, should anyone find out about the curse, not only will the curse get stronger and enact faster, but the person who found out will become more unlucky and accident prone, such seen when Akari told Jyunpei that she knew he was cursed and almost fell down the temple stair. His love interest is Kaede Mizuno, but is starting to become aware of the feelings of the other girls around him.
Kaede Mizuno(水野 楓,Mizuno Kaede)
Voiced by: Yuka Iguchi (Japanese); Lesley Pedersen (English)Kaede is Jyunpei Kousaka's classmate and crush who is initially oblivious of his feelings for her. She is described as athletic, smart and cute. Despite loving cats, her family owns four dogs, and cats tend to avoid her as she not only carries their smell, but gets overenthusiastic in handling them. This is mainly due to her only having experience with the big dogs her family owns and not realizing that cats are much different creatures. She tends to be airheaded, react to things naively and misunderstand people. Kaede meets Jyunpei when she falls on him from a tree trying to rescue a kitten that later climbs down itself. As a member of the track and field team, Kaede can run faster and longer than the average person, especially Jyunpei. She later develops feelings for Kousaka.
Kanako Sumiyoshi(住吉 加奈子,Sumiyoshi Kanako)
Voiced by: Ryōko Shiraishi (Japanese); Maggie Flecknoe (English)Kanako is Jyunpei Kousaka's classmate and childhood friend who has a fondness for cats and Jyunpei.[ch. 3] She is introduced in the series wearing manba make-up, which is a result of Kanako misunderstanding Jyunpei's intention of showing her Nyamsus doll to a girl.[ch. 4, 26] During Tokiwa High School's cultural festival, her makeup is washed off. Later, Jyunpei passes on the caba cat Kumaneko's thanks for taking care of him and Kanako reconciles with Jyunpei when he reveals that he still has Kanako's doll. Kanako stops wearing her make-up and she becomes popular with Tokiwa's male students.[ch. 4] She has a well-endowed body, and is not afraid to flaunt it, but often gets unwanted attention and is groped by Nagi Ichinose.[ch. 6] Kanako is very forceful and often gets Jyunpei to purchase her food and merchandise at his own expense. She harbors feelings for him since childhood. Kanako has a younger brother named Toru, who is dating Jyunpei's younger sister.
Nagi Ichinose(一ノ瀬 凪,Ichinose Nagi)
Voiced by: Yū Kobayashi (Japanese); Kara Greenberg (English)Nagi Ichinose is Kaede's senior on the track team and heir of a powerful yakuza family from Kyoto. Like Kaede, she can run far and fast easily without getting winded. Despite being a girl, she started assuming a more masculine behavior after she was rejected by her first love, who mistakenly assumed she was a guy because of her boyish appearance and personality. Even Jyunpei thought she was a boy at first when she confronted him for approaching Kaede (who she feels needs protecting.) However, after Jyunpei comforts her, she falls in love with him and resorts to extreme actions, such as attempting to transfer into his class despite being a year older, just to be at his side. She suffers from a fear of lightning, the fear stemming from the fact that she witnessed her grandfather being struck by lightning on several occasions. She punctuates her sudden appearances by sexually harassing Kanako (often involving groping her breasts). She has a rare condition where she gets drunk from drinking soft drinks, which seems to give her romantic-like, lesbian-like, affectionate feelings towards other girls including Kaede and Kanako. She is called "Ichinose-senpai" by Kaede. She has a male longhair cat named Josephine, who speaks in Kansai-ben accent and wears a small cape. Her cat is "married" to her older brother's female cat.
Kotone Kirishima(桐島 琴音,Kirishima Kotone)
Voiced by: Haruka Tomatsu (Japanese); Emily Neves (English)Kotone is the elder of the Kirishima twins. She, along with her sister, are the daughters of the Buddhist monk in the temple behind the cat statue Jyunpei that broke. Despite her gentle and sweet outward demeanor, she is interested in Jyunpei mainly because of his misfortunes and can be considered sadistic, delusional, and an obsessive stalker. In the anime, she is shown to have had this sort of behavior towards a teacher, even at a young age. She exhibits yandere tendencies as she becomes jealous if another girl gets too close to Jyunpei. She's hinted to have feelings for Kousaka. She is aware of Kaede's feelings for Jyunpei. Like her sister, she is aware of Jyunpei's curse and tries to find ways to help or encourage him to help more cats. She tends to bring the family's female black cat, Noir, who has a bit of a prima-donna attitude, wherever she goes. Some of this attitude is due to how Kotone's father practically ignored her and gave her common cat food while lavishing attention and gourmet cat food on Tama.
Akari Kirishima(桐島 朱莉,Kirishima Akari)
Voiced by: Haruka Tomatsu (Japanese); Cynthia Martinez (English)Akari is Kotone's younger twin sister. She, along with her sister, know that Jyunpei is cursed. They do not become cursed themselves as they have innate anti-magic abilities, but only for self-protection. She is a tsundere, and has the ability to sense the supernatural. She is extremely possessive of Kotone. In the anime, Akari is revealed to have been asocial as a child, thus causing her present awkwardness in dealing with people. The reason for this is because of her strong spiritual affinity, and she subconsciously avoided the other children. Despite her difficulties dealing with strangers, she seems to have no problem interacting with Jyunpei (though mostly due to her mistaken perception that he's becoming too close to Kotone). In contrast to her sister, she is aware of Kanako's feelings towards Jyunpei. Slowly, she too begins to harbor feelings for Jyunpei but tries to conceal them.
Keizo Kirishima(桐島 啓造,Kirishima Keizō)
Voiced by: Jūrōta Kosugi (Japanese); Andrew Love (English)Keizo is a Buddhist monk at the temple in which the cat deity dwells. He is the father of Kotone and Akari. Despite being a monk, he often dons disguises to visit cabaret clubs. Keizo found Tama shivering outside in the cold and took him in, but began to spoil him once he discovered that Tama was an extremely rare male calico cat; this angered Noir, the family's other pet cat.
Chizuru Mochizuki (望月 千鶴,Mochizuki Chizuru)
Voiced by: Rina Satō (Japanese); Monica Rial (English)Chizuru is a third-year college student working as a mail carrier for Japan Post Service when she is not in class. She has a bad sense of direction and frequently ends up getting lost.[ch. 15] She is somewhat perverse and enjoys teasing Jyunpei. She seems to take a liking to Jyunpei after he helped her deliver letters in a district she got lost in.[ch. 15] Jyunpei eventually takes up a part-time job at the post office during the winter to help raise money to repair the cat statue and they deliver the mail together.
Feline characters
Nyamsus(ニャムサス,Nyamusasu)
Voiced by: Atsuko Tanaka (Japanese); Marcy Bannor (English)A large, fat cat owned by Jyunpei's family, and the one who brings to him the requests of cats in need of his help. She is well known and most cats around Jyunpei's neighborhood see her as an older sister figure. She reveals (to herself) that she is very grateful for Jyunpei since he gave her a home by begging his mother to take her in despite his allergies. Nyamsus greatly cares for Jyunpei but shows this subtly like when she claims ownership of the living room so as to prevent Jyunpei from sleeping in it and so catching a cold. It is revealed that Nyamsus is the kitten that Kaede had left in a very nice comfortable box with a sign saying she needed a home due to not being able to keep a cat with all the dogs at her home.
Tama (タマ)
Voiced by: Jun Fukuyama (Japanese); Jay Hickman (English)A small cat owned by the Buddhist monk Keizo Kirishima, in charge of the temple whose statue was broken by Jyunpei, and an acquaintance of Nyamsus, who also brings requests to him. He goes about the neighborhood and tells the other cats around about Jyunpei, which is part of the reason why the local cats know so much about him. He is an extremely rare male calico cat.
Noir(ノワール,Nowāru)
Voiced by: Yukari Fukui (Japanese); Elizabeth Bunch (English)A black cat owned by the Kirishima twins. She received less attention once Tama was adopted into the family, and became jealous of his near-royal treatment as a rare breed. Still, the two share a fondness for one another, but easily become argumentative. The reason for her conflict with Tama is suspected to be his adoration of Nyamsus, and is heavily hinted that she is jealous of Nyamsus.
"Strawberry ~Amaku Setsunai Namida~ (Strawberry～甘く切ない涙～)" by Asami Imai
Reception
Theron Martin from Anime News Network gave the English sub of the anime a C+ rating. In his review he says that the anime doesn't stand out compared to other series where harem is a genre. He goes on to say though that it tries to go with "some unusual twists". Chris Beveridge from The Fandom Post gave the anime a B rating. He calls the humor "cute", and that the ending builds up to something nice despite the ongoing manga.
