「猫カフェと居酒屋で遊びたい!」 (Neko Cafe to Izakaya de Asobitai!)
“I Want to Hang Out at a Cat Cafe and a Pub!”

I was going to bring up the fanart controversy, but why would I want to do anything that silly. Not when it’s Uzaki’s 20th birthday celebration. In this episode, we get to fulfill the wishes of our main duo; Sakurai’s dream of going to a cat cafe and Uzaki’s plan to celebrate her 20th birthday by binge-drinking for the first time.

Cat cafes are an interesting place to visit. I went to one for the first time last year and had a good time. The food wasn’t too impressive, but it has the novelty of getting to play around with some cute cats for a short amount of time. Seeing how much Sakurai loves cats, however, it was more than enough to make him happy to have space where he can cuddle up with some cats.

It was funny to see how things ended up unraveling once Uzaki decided to tease Sakurai closely enough to make the supervisor watching over them uneasy. There are a number of fanservicey moments in the episode, but Uzaki stepping on Sakurai was admittedly the only one that was effective on me.

The highlight of the episode was Uzaki’s 20th birthday, which she decided she wanted to celebrate at an izakaya with some drinks. Of course, it’s always safe to go your first drinking outing with a good friend that can keep you from going too crazy. Because her friend is Sakurai, however, it gives her carte blanche to burn a hole through his wallet to try just about any drink she can get before she goes over the edge.

Luckily, the anime never veers into uncomfortable territory since Sakurai is dead-tired after he invites her over to his place and she’s not a creepy drunk. In fact, the most tragic happenstance of the birthday is the morning after when she gets her first hangover and vomits in both the toilet and Sakurai’s cot that she was sleeping on. It was an episode that went by quickly, but still a nice and amusing episode. It was cute to see how much companionship they had with drinking at the izakaya and how she teased him at the Cat Cafe. Not to mention that they had an amusing gag where they both had a hand in getting each other’s hopes up by asking them to join up at their respective hangout spots.

10 Comments

  1. You made me google about what controversy you were talking about. I get the general idea now, and how many tangential arguments were born from that. I find it kinda ironic that the comment section has provided a good example of those tangents.
    Anyway, it would be funny if this had aired on her actual birthday, but hey, at least it was the same month.

    ruicarlov
    1. It was the trend online where people drew Uzaki in their own art style as an attempt to publicly “fix” the design. And with most things online, there are two sides that ended up escalating it into a war.

      Uzaki in the West at least feels like a lightning rod for critics who either want to get really mean about the people who like it or the animators/artists that made the anime/manga. There’s a sense of cruelty in crapping on her design with the full intent of saying that it sucks, the people who made it suck, it means the show also sucks, and you either suck or are a criminal for liking it.

      Sorry about that dude’s comment being up for that long. I had just checked in on the comments when I saw a long string of hate speech and got rid of it right away. I’ll make it more of an imperative to monitor the comments more diligently to clean up the SEO and hate speech that pops in right away.

      Choya
  2. A fun episode to watch… with a caveat at the end. Sakurai showing emotion at the cat cafe points to him being bottled up for some reason; I wonder if they’ll explore it?

    When Hana wanted to go drinking, I twigged to that when she said “20,” my wife and I looked at each other. We were both in college as engineer students over 30 years ago and knew how this would play out. My comment that almost made my wife sick was “that’s a guy’s toilet!” She could imagine the hair and mold on the rim.

    The last scene bothered us both. Don’t know about Japan but even two generations ago in the US, your friends and seniors passed on to NEVER let a drunk sleep on their back: that’s an express ticket to choking to death on your own puke. They made a joke of it here but it’s not funny.

    Barring that single scene, good character development for both and we’re looking forward to next week!

    1. Dude he was just trying to be nice. Yiu really expect realism from a fucking anime where the girl had breasts the size of watermelons? And if you think they will explore the repressed side of Senpei with 5 episodes left you best read the manga.

      Tayo
    2. It’s nice to get little hints of Sakurai and Uzaki’s personalities beyond the jokes written for a particular segment.

      Yeah, there were red flags right away with Uzaki wanting to celebrate her 20th birthday trying alcohol. Knowing the pomp and circumstance that comes with legally drinking, there are no limits set in your mind as to how much is enough nor has the tolerance been built up yet. One of my younger experiences was getting sloshed at a tapas bar and then walking to a museum to space out the entire time. Whenever I saw anything at that museum, that scene in Ferris Bueller came to mind when his friend stares intently at a single blotch of paint for a solid minute.

      I was astounded that she was sleeping on her back and the midst of being drunk/hungover. With all the 70’s rockstars who passed away from choking on vomit, it’s more commonplace to use that as a frame-of-reference as to why rule of thumb is to always go with sleeping on your sides.

      Choya
  3. That was fun. As avid cat lover (not that way you pervs!) I dream of visiting cat cafe sometime in the future.
    And poor Uzaki has paid the price for the first binge- first hangover.
    And it was terrible one…

    ewok40k
  4. Man I am amazed this series even has enough fans to have a controversy tbh. It is bizarre to see so much fanart posted for this series. The main chick is just insanely annoying to the point i woulda had her ass slapped with a restraining order after the first episode. I could understand it if the design was cute but she has the world’s blandest design. Short ugly hair with the most uninspired outfit ever. Oh, yeah, she has boobs. But really you can’t get your boob fix elsewhere?

    I just dont get the Fandom for this series. How is it possible people like this to this extent? Usually I can find something redeeming in a series but this one I just cant and would like to understand

    Alima
    1. Can’t comment on the series as I’ve never watched it, but its clear from the marketing promotion behind the physical disc sales that they’re pushing on the character having oversized breasts.

      So its more “Buy this series because boobs”.

      Lyfe

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