Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto

a.k.a. Magical Meow Meow Taruto

a.k.a. Mahou Shoujo Neko Taruto

Genre: Comedy, mahou shoujo
Company: Studio Madhouse
Format: 12 episodes
Dates: 7/5/2001 to 9/27/2001

In a land where cat people are pets living their lives among humans, Taruto seems to stand out. When she, Iori and Kinako move to the town of Okashina, all the other cats seem to take notice immediately. Apparently Taruto’s knack for magic has made her a princess among her people, but her hit-or-miss spells don’t match her ambitions to be a true princess. In any case, her arrival has stirred the pot, and everyone seems to want to be either her friend or enemy. That’s a lot for a newly-crowned princess to handle!

summary by Kain

 

Reviewed: 04/25/2004 by
Grade: 54% 

Highs: Little girls will be overwhelmed with kawaii

Lows: Too… slow… ten episodes of filler, two episodes of story

Here’s an anime made for children (particularly those of the female persuasion), and does everything it can to bombard this targeted demographic. Seeing as how I am neither a child (physically) nor a female, I found little in the way of amusement.

This is not to say that anime made for children can’t have a great plot or characters; it’s just that this occurs once in a blue moon. Instead, Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto goes strictly for atmosphere. Indeed, after a while you grow accustomed to how the world in this anime works; admittedly, at first I was uncomfortable with the notion people’s pets act and look a lot like people themselves instead of cats.

Of course, if all you have is atmosphere and basically no story, then the other aspects begin to lag, as well. As kawaii as Taruto’s habit of ending sentences with “nya-no” is, she is a fairly boring and annoying character. Because there is essentially no story (except for the last two episodes), the characters are like a bunch of jackets with no rack to hang them on. And despite the presence of some very good seiyuu (Hisakawa Aya as Chiffon and Yamamoto Maria as Chitose), I found the overall voice performances to be on the wrong end of the quality scale. On the same end of that quality scale resides the animation, which during most of the episodes became down-right bad.

I was bored out of my mind, but my “take one for the team” mentality urged me to finish. Eventually, I did. If you’re babysitting and need a show to placate the kiddies, this may be a good choice. I have better ways of spending my time.

 

Magical Nyan Nyan Taruto can be downloaded legally in the United States HERE.