Holiday Review #9: CAT + GAMER

 Sometimes though, you don't want bodice-ripping smut or complicated emotional masterpieces.  Sometimes you just want a simple story about an adult lady having a good time with a cute cat.  Luckily, Dark Horse Comics has you covered this year.

CAT + GAMER (Nekogurashi no Gamer-san), by Wataru Nadatani.  First published in 2018 and first published in North America in 2022.

PLOT:

Riko is a no-nonsense office worker who works hard so she can leave work right at 5PM.  That allows her to focus her spare time and energy on her favorite hobby: video games.  One day she takes in a stray kitten on an impulse.  Even though Riko has no experience with pet ownership, she's determined to apply the same mindset she takes to gaming to pet ownership.

PLOT:

With Cat + Gamer, what you see is what you get.  One half of this manga is cute kitty antics in the vein of something like Chi's Sweet Home.  The other is a pretty lady having a good time doing things like maxing out her party in her favorite JRPG or grinding for rare loot in online games.  If neither of those do anything for you, then Cat + Gamer has pretty much nothing else to offer.

That's not to say that those two things are poorly executed.  The kitty content is suitably cute and realistic to the joys and struggles of owning a kitten.  Riko is also a fine character in her own right.  She seems to have figured out a good balance between work and play and I like both the sense of ceremony and celebration she brings to her gaming and her determination to learn how to be a good cat owner.  If there's a problem, it's that she might be a bit too well-adjusted.  The weirdest thing she does is ask for advice from the pet store staff using gaming lingo.  The biggest problem she has is fearing that her coworkers will discover her cute cat picture Twitter account.  I get that this series is mostly meant to be iyashikei-style good vibes, but good vibes can only get you so far without any other narrative hooks to keep things going.

ART:

Nadatani takes great care to draw Musubi the kitten as realistically as possible.  At most they round their eyes a little to make them cuter - otherwise, he looks, moves, and poses like a real cat.  In comparison, their take on Riko and the other people is equally wide-eyed, friendly, and comfortable.  Beyond the care taken with the cats and the game consoles, there's not much to say about this one visually, other than the comedy mostly relies on wild takes, speedlines, and sound effects for punchlines.

RATING:

Cat + Gamer is comforting fare, but there's not much going on underneath its surface.  It's a pleasant enough manga, but not one I feel particularly compelled to read further.

This series is published by Dark Horse Comics.  It is complete in Japan with 8 volumes available.  2 volumes have been released and are currently in print.

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