Nyan Koi!

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Nyan Koi!

Nyan Koi! manga volume 1 cover.
にゃんこい!
Genre Romantic Comedy Supernatural
Manga
Written by Sato Fujiwara
Published by Flex Comix
Demographic Shōnen
Magazine FlexComix Blood
Original run August 10, 2007 – ongoing
Volumes 5
Anime television series
Directed by Keiichiro Kawaguchi
Written by Shinichi Inotsume
Music by Manabu Miwa
Shigenobu Ōkawa
Studio AIC
Licensed by
Sentai Filmworks
Network TBS, MBS, CBC, BS-TBS
Original run October 1, 2009 December 17, 2009
Episodes 12

Nyan Koi! (にゃんこい!, lit. "Meow Love!") is a manga created 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.[1] The series has been licensed by Sentai Filmworks and released in North America with English subtitles on December 14, 2010,[2] and dubbed in English on December 31, 2013.[3]

Plot

Junpei Kosaka is a second-year high school student who despises cats and has an allergy to them. It just so happens that his high school crush, Kaede Mizuno, is a girl who adores cats. One day, while walking home from school, Junpei 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.

Characters

Human characters

Junpei Kosaka (高坂 潤平 Kōsaka Junpei)
Voiced by: Shintarō Asanuma (Japanese), Connor Leach (English)
The main protagonist who has a chronic allergy and thereby hatred to 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 compensate for it, he must make use of his new-found ability of communicating with cats to fulfill one hundred requests of help from them. If he does not perform this task, he will be transformed into a cat, and due to his allergy, die from himself. And, if anyone should 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 as when Akari first told Junpei she knew he was cursed and almost fell down the temple stone steps due to a moment's inattention. His love interest is Kaede Mizuno, but is starting to be conscious about the feelings of the other girls around him.
Kaede Mizuno (水野 楓 Mizuno Kaede)
Voiced by: Yuka Iguchi (Japanese), Lesley Pedersen (English)
Junpei's classmate and crush who is totally oblivious of his feelings for her (though she realizes feelings for him as time passes). 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 always carries their smell, but gets overenthusiastic holding a cat causing the unfortunate feline to get extremely scared and suffer mental trauma. This is mainly due to her only having experience with the big dogs her family owns and not realizing things are much different personality and response-wise with cats. She tends to be airheaded, react to things naively and misunderstand people. Kaede met Junpei when she fell on him from out of a tree trying to rescue a kitten that later climbed down itself. Being on the track team she can run faster and longer than the average person, especially Junpei when she misunderstands his yelling at cats as being directed at her.
Kanako Sumiyoshi (住吉 加奈子 Sumiyoshi Kanako)
Voiced by: Ryōko Shiraishi (Japanese), Maggie Flecknoe (English)
She is one of Junpei's classmates and his childhood friend. During elementary school, the two became enemies due to a misunderstanding where Kanako thought that Junpei was giving away her gift to another girl while in fact he was only showing it to her. Due to her unhappiness from being at odds with Junpei, she takes on a manba appearance at first, but dresses normally after returning to friendly terms with him. Kanako is often seen bickering with Junpei and has a short-temper. She has a well-endowed body, and isn't afraid to flaunt it, but often gets unwanted attention and teased from Ichinose's hands. Kanako is very forceful and often gets Junpei to purchase her food at his own expense. She still harbors feelings for him. Kanako has a younger brother who she finds out is dating Junpei's younger sister.
Nagi Ichinose (一ノ瀬 凪 Ichinose Nagi)
Voiced by: Yū Kobayashi (Japanese), Kara Greenberg (English)
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 or sweaty. 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 for some reason.) However, after Junpei comforts her, she fell for him and resorts to extreme actions to be beside him, like attempting to move to his class despite having already coursed it. She suffers from astraphobia, the fear having stemmed from the fact that she was traumatized from seeing her grandfather getting struck by lightning on several occasions in front of her. She also graces her sudden appearances by sexually harassing Kanako (often involving grabbing her breasts). She has a rare condition where she gets drunk just by drinking soft drinks. She has a male longhair cat that 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)
She is the twin sister of Akari and the older of the two. She, along with her sister, are the daughters of the Buddhist monk in the temple behind the cat statue Junpei broke. Despite her gentle and sweet outward demeanor, she is interested in Junpei mainly because of his misfortunes, and can be considered sadistic, delusional, and an obsessive stalker. In the anime, she is shown to have this sort of behavior even at a young age towards a teacher. She also shows jealousy if another girl gets too close to Junpei. She's a yandere. She is aware of Kaede's feelings for Junpei. Like her sister she is aware of Junpei's curse and is trying to find ways to help or encourage him to help more cats. She tends to bring the family's female black cat, Noir, with her, that has a bit of a prima donna attitude, especially due to how the monk practically ignored her and gave her common cat food while lavishing attention and gourmet cat food to Tama.
Akari Kirishima (桐島 朱莉 Kirishima Akari)
Voiced by: Haruka Tomatsu (Japanese), Cynthia Martinez (English)
She is the twin sister of Kotone and the younger of the two. She, along with her sister, know that Junpei is cursed. They do not become cursed as they have innate anti-magic abilities, but only for self-protection. She is tsundere, and has the ability to sense the supernatural. In the anime, Akari was said to not socialize much even at a young age, thus causing her awkwardness when it comes to dealing with people. The reason for this is because of her strong spiritual affinity, and she subconsciously avoided mixing around with other children. She is also shown to have magical powers (though this is not the case in the manga). She is extremely possessive of Kotone; besides her twin sister, she seems to show no problem interacting with Junpei (though mostly for her mistaken perception that he's becoming too close to Kotone) like she does with most other people. In contrast to her sister, she is aware of Kanako's feelings towards Junpei. She too begins to harbour feelings for Junpei but tries to conceal them.
Keizo Kirishima (桐島 啓造 Kirishima Keizō)
Voiced by: Jūrōta Kosugi (Japanese), Andrew Love (English)
The Buddhist monk at the temple in which the cat deity dwells. He is the father of Kotone and Akari. He often dons disguises to visit cabaret clubs, despite being a monk. 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 angers Noir, the family's other pet cat.
Chizuru Mochizuki (望月 千鶴 Mochizuki Chizuru)
Voiced by: Rina Satō (Japanese), Monica Rial (English)
A third-year college student working as a mail carrier when she's not attending lectures. She has a bad sense of direction and frequently ends up getting lost. She's somewhat perverse and enjoys teasing Jyunpei. She seems to take a liking to Junpei after he helps her deliver letters in a district she got lost in. Junpei 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 do mail deliveries together.

Feline characters

Nyamsus (ニャムサス Nyamusasu)
Voiced by: Atsuko Tanaka (Japanese), Marcy Bannor (English)
A large, fat cat owned by Junpei's family, and the one who brings to him requests of the cats in need of his help. She is well known and most cats around Junpei's neighborhood see her as an older sister figure. She reveals (to herself) that she is very much grateful of Junpei since Junpei gave her a home, going so far as to beg in front of his mother while crying and ignoring his allergies. Junpei's conflicts with Kanako coupled with school causes him to drift apart from, according to him, someone very dear to him. Nyamsus greatly cares for Junpei but shows this subtly like when she claims ownership of the living room so as to prevent Junpei from sleeping in it and catching a cold. Interestingly enough, she was the cat Kaede left in a box (very nice comfortable box with a sign saying the cat needs a home) due to not being able to keep a cat with all the dogs at her home that Junpei found and beg his mother to keep before passing out due to his allergies.
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 Junpei, and an acquaintance of Nyamsus, who also brings requests to him. He goes about the neighborhood and tells the other cats around about Junpei, which is part of the reason why the local cats know so much about him. He is an extremely rare male calico cat.
Josephine (ジョセフィーヌ Josefīnu)
Voiced by: Koji Yusa (Japanese), Sam Roman (English)
He is a cat owned by Nagi. He is dressed up in an elegant manner, and speaks in a Kansai dialect. He wishes for Nagi to shed her masculine behavior, and thus asks Junpei to help her fall in love once more. He has a wife who lives in Kyoto.
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 was 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 conflicts with Tama are suspected to be due to Tama's adoration of Nyamsus and is heavily hinted to be jealous of Nyamsus.
Chatora (チャトラ)
Voiced by: Kazuya Tatekabe (Japanese), Mark X. Laskowski (English)
An overweight cat who lives across the street from Junpei. His master put him on a diet, fearing the effects of his obesity. He threatens to leave home because of this, but with a little of Junpei's convincing, he decides to go home and try the diet.

Episodes

# Title Original air date
01 "The Scruffy Cat & the Cursed High Schooler"
"Busaiku na Neko to Norowareshi Kōkōsei" (ブサイクな猫と呪われし高校生) 
October 1, 2009
Junpei Kosaka, due to his allergy to them, tries his best to avoid contact with cats. However, that is until he accidentally damages the statue of a cat deity. According to the Buddhist monk Keizo Kirishima, one would be cursed with the ability to talk to cats as a consequence, tasked of attending one hundred requests from them, with the risk of be transformed into a cat himself if he fails to do so. The first request he receives, from Nyamsus and Tama, is to help the stray cats in the local park who have been tormented by a stranger leaving them traumatized. At the mall, he runs into his crush Kaede Mizuno, and while on the way home, the tormentor later turns out to be Kaede, who has an extreme fondness for cats to the point of smothering them. 
02 "That Man Is a Manservant?"
"Sono Otoko Geboku?" (その男 下僕?) 
October 8, 2009
Junpei must help a caba cat to give his thanks to a girl who helped him. However, she is no other than Kanako Sumiyoshi, a childhood acquaintance of his who wears manba makeup. During the annual high school cultural festival, she is determined to get him to do her bidding. He hesitates to give his thanks, since she has changed after the time she saw him give her cat doll to another girl when they were kids. A bucket of water accidentally spills on Kanako, wiping off her makeup, and after she gets mad and chases him, Kaede finds her to dry her off. After the cultural festival, Junpei gives his thanks to Kanako, and they reconcile with each other. The caba cat later moves in with Junpei until he can find another home. 
03 "Your name is..."
"Kimi no Na wa" (キミの名は) 
October 15, 2009
Junpei meets Chizuru Mochizuki, a postwoman who has no sense of direction, and decides to help her. While roaming the city with her, he also helps the cats with their various requests. However, hanging around with her ends up putting him on a series of misunderstandings with people he knows, much to his despair. Junpei reminisces to when he first met Kaede on the first day of school, remembering how she tried to rescue a cat up on a tree but accidentally slipped and landed on him. After she helped him up, he fell in love with her ever since then. 
04 "Beautiful People"
"Utsukushii Hito" (美しい人) 
October 22, 2009
Junpei receives a letter from Nagi Ichinose, an upperclassman of his, who challenges him to a duel, but since he ignored this letter for three days, Nagi passes out due to stress. During a downpour, Junpei, Kaede, and Kanako take an unconscious Nagi to her house, which so happens to be a mansion of a yakuza. Jii, Nagi's grandfather, treats the three to his home. While there, Junpei is requested from Josephine, a cat owned by Nagi, to make Nagi fall in love. While Kaede and Kanako are taking a bath, Junpei is sent to Nagi's bedroom, where he is surprised to figure out that Nagi is a girl who is in love with Kaede and she also has a fear of lightning due to trauma. She was also heartbroken when her first crush turned her down for her boyish appearance. After calming her down, he departs from the mansion, with Josephine satisfied by the fact that Nagi will now act more feminine. 
05 "Times Square (Time for a Love Square)"
"Taimuzu Sukuwea (Shikaku Kankei no Koku)" (四角関係の刻(タイムズ・スクウェア)) 
October 29, 2009
Junpei is given a pair of tickets to an amusement park from Nagi, who wants to settle things with him. Kaede and Kanako end up coming along, much to Nagi's disappointment. While Kanako takes Junpei to a roller coaster ride, Nagi tells Kaede something that has been making her blush in front of Junpei. In a haunted house and then on the Ferris wheel, Junpei sees this as the perfect chance to get closer to Kaede. However, their brief moments are ruined when Nagi captures a picture of them and Kanako attacks Junpei out of jealousy. Soon enough, Kaede begins to develop feelings for Junpei, concerned of who he might have an interest in. After school as the sun is about to set, Kaede goes off to search for Junpei, but when she finds him, she secretly witnesses him at the Buddhist temple in front of a girl, who is aware of his curse. 
06 "Milk and Bitters and Sugar and Spice"
"Miruku ando Bitā ando Shugā ando Supaisu" (ミルク&ビター&シュガー&スパイス) 
November 5, 2009
The next day at the Buddhist temple, Junpei meets Kotone Kirishima and Akari Kirishima, twins with opposite personalities, both knowing about his curse due to their ability to sense the supernatural. They later decided to help on his ordeal. Tama and Noir, the cat owned by the twins, have been in rivalry with each other for a long time. This is because Tama used to be pampered and spoiled after being adopted into the temple because of his rare breed. As Junpei follows Tama and Noir around the neighborhood, he runs into Kaede, who is walking her pack of dogs. Although Tama and Noir argue, they eventually make up for their differences. However, Junpei gives Kaede the wrong impression when he could not hear her over the cats, making her cry and leave. He later apologizes to her for the misunderstanding. 
07 "Wait Until Dark"
"Kuraku Naru made Matte" (暗くなるまで待って) 
November 12, 2009
Junpei sets for a school trip to Kyoto with his classmates, but he barely has time to enjoy the trip when word about him spread among the local cats who flood him with requests. As Junpei, Kaede, and Kanako later spend the day together, they soon stumble upon the fact that Nagi, whose family is situated in Kyoto, is there to attend an annual meeting. This meeting is in fact an arrangement to have Nagi choose a husband, a decision which she would always decline. 
08 "The Passionate Private Running Coach"
"Honō no Kojin Kyōju Rannā" (炎の個人教授ランナー) 
November 19, 2009
Junpei is tasked to help a cat named Michi to get in shape in order to be able to catch sparrows to win the favor of his beloved. However, he is interrupted by Nagi, who wants him to join her track and field club with Kaede. When Junpei starts to neglect his promise with Michi, the latter decides to enact revenge by putting him on a very embarrassing situation. Junpei was keeping hold of Kaede's handkerchief to return it to her the following day, but instead he pulls out from his bag her underwear that had been missing from her locker the day before. After Michi apologizes for his actions, Junpei trains him to become much stronger than ever, being able to be with his beloved. Junpei tells Kaede about the mix-up and returns the handkerchief back to her. 
09 "Girls in the Water"
"Gāruzu in za Wōtā" (ガールズ・イン・ザ・ウォーター) 
November 26, 2009
The gang sets for a leisure time at the swimming pool before final exams. Junpei get a nosebleed after trying to catch Kaede in the pool when she was knocked over by Kanako and Nagi fighting. He later asks Kanako to help him get a cat to climb over the wall outside before returning back to the pool. The next day, Junpei catches cold and misses class, so Kanako pays a visit to give him the study guide handouts and take care of him. To make matters more complicated, Junpei meets Chatora, an overweight cat in need of a diet, but he is upset by the fact this cat rejects such advice at first, making him feel lightheaded. As Kanako puts Junpei to rest, she struggles with her true feelings for him, abruptly leaving before he wakes up. The final exam takes place the following day. 
10 "As it Happened One Night"
"Aru Yoru no Dekigoto" (ある夜の出来事) 
December 3, 2009
Everyone except Kanako passed their exam, so she needs to do a report on local history to pass as well. Junpei has Kotone and Akari to show his friends around the neighborhood to gather such information. However, his friends joke around with a maneki-neko figurine, which urges Kotone and Akari to stop them, due to a superstition of being cursed, and purify the figurine through a chant. At night, Kotone and Akari end up counting on Junpei's unexpected help to deal with the spirit of the maneki-neko figurine who threatens to kill them. With their combined and struggling effort, they eventually manage to destroy the spirit. 
11 "Friends"
"Furenzu" (フレンズ) 
December 10, 2009
As the second semester comes to a close, everyone prepares as Christmas approaches. Kanako stumbles upon Junpei, who is taking a part-time job as a postman, inviting him to go with her to the movie theater. Before going there, they spent some quality time together in the mall. Kanako enjoys her time with him, recalling how he was great her friendship with him was in the past. The next day, Kanako, who worked part-time at a concession stand, gives Kaede a present. When she goes to the park, she overhears Junpei talking about a curse while he rescues a kitten from a tree to bring down for a cat. 
12 "Does Heaven Await Me?"
"Tengoku wa Matte Kureru?" (天国は待ってくれる?) 
December 17, 2009
Junpei suddenly begins to turn into a cat, having Kotone and Akari help sneak him out of the post office unnoticed. He feels that Kaede is suspicious his secret, so he must find a way to dissuade her before being stricken with the full force of his curse. He comes up with a plan to fake being cursed by the maneki-neko figurine, having Kotone and Akari purifying it afterwards. However, Nagi accidentally takes off his hat which reveals his cat ears, causing him to run away to the park. At this point his turns in a cat, and Kaede then finds him there, not knowing it is him. As the local cats in the area gather around her, Kaede realizes how Junpei cared for the cats, believing he was never cursed. This undoes the curse, returning Junpei back to a human. Junpei relives his normal life as the new year begins. 

Theme Songs

Opening Theme:

"Nyanderful! (にゃんだふる!)" by Yui Sakakibara

Ending Theme:

"Strawberry ~Amaku Setsunai Namida~ (Strawberry~甘く切ない涙~)" by Asami Imai

References

  1. "Nyan Koi! Official Blog's news about the anime" (in Japanese). Retrieved 2009-03-11. 
  2. "Section23 Films Adds Nyan Koi! Anime". Anime News Network. 2010-09-21. 
  3. "Section23 Films Delays Medaka Box, Nyankoi Blu-rays/DVDs - News". Anime News Network. 2013-11-01. Retrieved 2013-11-05. 

External links

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