Ramen Akaneko

If you love cats or gourmet anime, or both cats AND Food, look no further than Ramen Akaneko, an anime I feel was specifically made to appeal to people like me who love cats and food!

Our protagonist Tamako is recommended to apply for work at Ramen Akaneko, a Ramen joint run by cats. Cats that can talk. And cook. And serve customers. Like some kind of fever dream come true. Her job - to take care of the cats, by brushing them (!!!) And they decide to hire her because she isn't a cat lover who will be unprofessional and fawn on them (!!!)

Soon ... she gets to know all the cats, and like any cat lover will tell you, they all have different personalities. Seriously though the characters (cats specifically) are the best thing about this anime. Apologies in advance but I'm going to describe them using terms familiar to the cat lover types.
* Bunzou - the orange "ginger" kitty, instead of being the feisty one orange brain cell, is the semi gruff, professional chef
* Sabu - the black "void" Kitty is the sous chef, with a hobby most will be surprised to learn about
* Hana - the white "cloud?" kitty is so dang adorable she's in charge of customer service
* Sasaki - the bicolor silver and white tabby is the moneybags Boss of the operation, and
* Krishna - the "muscle" tiger is the shy, sweet, ramen maker!

Watching each character's story get revealed while they live their daily life is mostly comforting. This is a slice of life, that happens to have a found family of felines plus one human worker who regains her confidence after working for a different kind of business, one that is kinder to their employees than her previous place of work.

Initially I thought this had an Iyashikei slice of life with lots of comedy BUT some of the stories are a bit too hard hitting for that, involving bullying, workplace drama, internet fame, consent, legal issues and death. This anime just happens to use the vehicle of cute cats to try and take some of the sting out of what would otherwise be seriously traumatic issues. After the credits there are short vignettes of behind the scenes type footage, most are comedic in nature.

The biggest downside of this anime is the animation is inconsistency between the 3D and 2D styles. The main cats look great, but sometimes the tiger's anatomy seems a bit wonky, the humans too. Thankfully all the food looks good so there's that check mark for the gourmet watcher in me, but ... the food doesn't look mouthwatering delicious like some of the better gourmet anime I've watched.

Overall, this would be a good show to introduce the older, younger or food or cat lovers to anime since it's PG with none of the fan service cringe stuff that will turn some viewers off. Personally I enjoyed watching this every week, with one of my cats on my lap getting treats while I went Aww and pet the kitty, all the while WISHING a place like this existed because as a former Persian caretaker I am eminently qualified and I want that job!

I came in with low expectations, as I remember watching a trailer and thinking it looked "mid" but I really did enjoy this series! It is a cozy SOL. All the cats feel very unique in each of their personalities. The episodic format works well, giving time for each character to be fleshed out. Each episode or vignette is enjoyable. After the credits, the "Daily Akenko" is a neat addition that gives us more insight into the vignettes.

What I wasn't a fan of was two main things. The animation leaves much to be desired and the MC was very bland.

Despite that, it is ... a solid feels-good SOL about Cats & Ramen what's not to love?

Ramen Akaneko is about the slice of life of our main character, Tamako working in a ramen shop operated by cats. Is it particularly comedy oriented despite the silly premise? Surprisingly, not really. It's just a serious slice of life story about a part timer with cats substituting people working in a ramen shop. Naturally, they have their feline propensities, such as grooming themselves, being...cats, etc.

If you find that fun, that's good. To me--well--it's basically just a generic slice of life show. There's some workplace melodrama, sometimes there's some character development, but to be honest, the cat stuff is so surface-level that you could ... potentially rewrite this entire story with humans replacing them and it would functionally be the same show.

The anime is very cheap looking because it is. There's blending of CGI and 2D, both are well below average and sub-par. I kind of found it funny to look at in the first few episodes before figuring out they were just blending low poly CGI models, and to blend them together, they use similarly low quality 2D renders of the characters so the blend isn't obvious.