Summer 2023: The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today

Synopsis

Fukuzawa Saku is an excellent office worker, but because of that, she has zero sense of cooking and housekeeping. One day, she picked up a kitten that was on the verge of freezing to death. The cat named Yukichi, suddenly grew to a size unsuitable for a cat, towering over Saku in terms of height. Yukichi does all the cooking, laundry, cleaning, and shopping on behalf of the useless master. Yukichi has become a “masterful cat” that can do everything perfectly.

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Vina Nurziani (The Indonesian Anime Times)

Dekineko anime starts by portraying Saku’s and Yukichi’s daily life from the time they wake up, and she goes to work, to the time they sleep. It’s set to introduce the characters and the situation surrounding them. When Saku picked up Yukichi from the street, she didn’t expect Yukichi to be the cat Yukichi is right now. The cat grew up to be masterful at housework and now helps Saku gets by in her busy everyday life. Given the circumstance of how they met, Yukichi’s masterful skills at housework can be interpreted through 恩返し (ongaeshi) meaning “returning the kindness”. And since Yukichi is a cat, it reminds me of Neko no Ongaeshi, just from the title only. But the concept of “animals” repaying kindness is a pretty common setting in anime and manga narratives. For example, an episode of Hoozuki no Reitetsu in its second season adapts the folklore Tsuru no Ongaeshi as the premise to show how Hoozuki deals with the situation. In Neko no Ongaeshi, Haru was offered a hand in marriage by a prince of the Cat Kingdom after saving him from being hit by a truck. Additionally, in Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san, Senko helped soothes Kuroto from the curse as her repayment for saving her life from a cursed nine-tailed fox.

But unlike Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san which gives the sense of a supernatural experience, Dekineko rather gives a surreal experience. For Saku, the existence of Yukichi is something that happens in the realm of fantasy. Having a human-sized cat that walks on two feet, has enough intelligence to understand humans, and has the ability to function as a human, but still has the characteristic of a cat in disliking water. Yet that fantasy crashes into Saku’s reality. She tries to make a rational impression by saying she has a normal pet when she talks about her cat to protect herself from being seen as an insane person. Saku’s friends also believe that Saku’s cat is a normal cat, they gift Saku cat products and ask about the cat. Little does she know that Yukichi always has a conversation with her neighbours every morning and they don’t think that Yukichi is weird.

The Masterful Cat Is Depressed Again Today is produced by GoHands studio, the same studio that produced The Girl I Like Forgot Her Glass. The animation style of the studio really amplifies the surrealist experience given by Yukichi and Saku. Really looking forward to what the anime has in the upcoming episodes. This anime is also available on Ani-One YouTube channel.

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Screenshots and Trailer

The Indonesian Anime Times