10 Best Neko Anime That You Should Know Update 04/2024

Best Neko Anime

Japan has mastered the art of making characters adorable. This is a well-known and generally accepted fact.

Animal traits like ears, tails, attitudes and even a “fang of mischief” are some of their favorite methods of producing cute creatures.

A prevalent practice in anime is to make the main character, “kemonomimi,” the central focus of the show. Here are ten concrete instances that illustrate my point.

1. Asobi ni Iku yo

Asobi ni Iku yo

When it comes to approaching women in Japan, men have a difficult time. Social anxiety is a real phenomenon. Naked cat girls literally descend from the sky into the laps of regular teens in series likeAsobi Ni Iku yo!

If this is the most feasible way for them to meet women, then Japan’s dropping birthrates may be explained by this.

Eris, a cat-girl alien, is on a mission to research Earth and its inhabitants for her home world, and this story is all about that. In the meantime, sinister organizations are attempting to seize her for unknown reasons.

You know they’re not even pretending that the objective of the show isn’t “look at this lovely cat girl,” because the English title of the series is “Cat Planet Cuties.”

2. Dog Days

Alternatively, perhaps you’d prefer to watch dogs and cats fight. And instead of actual dogs and cats, it’s dog girls and cat girls. And they’re not fighting a war; instead, they’re participating in sports festival competitions with no deaths or injuries.

Let’s face it: Dog Days is just a cutesy cartoon. It’s a ridiculous story with a silly narrative, but the characters are adorable and the moe humor is spot on. Having fun is possible if you’re cool with that.

3. Inukami!

Inukami

Dog gods or dog spirits are an important Japanese deity known as Inukami. They might be mischievous, yet they can also be loyal to humans, just like dogs.

Here we have two misfits put together: inukami trainer KeitaKawahira, who has little knack for training, and rebellious inukami Youko, who nobody can manage to control.

Keita and Youko get into a lot of mischief together, as he goes after women and cash while Youko, his contract partner, gets enraged and blows him up a lot.

It’s a love story, so of course. You’ve seen it all before.

4. Mayoi Neko Overrun!

The concept of a “cat girl” can be a little more fluid at times. In certain cases, they bear a striking resemblance to cats, with furry ears, tails, and whiskers.

Other times, they’re just average gals with cat-ear-shaped hair and demeanor to go along with it. That’sMayoi Neko Overrun!, the story of a weird cat-like girl named Nozomi Kiriya who is adopted by the proprietor of a neighborhood cake business.

And Takumi Tsuzuki lives in that cake business, where he develops friendships with Nozomi, his childhood buddy, the school’s richest and strangest girl, and his older sister, who isn’t connected by blood, but who is obviously very important to him.

As the cast strives to learn who Nozomi truly is and why she behaves so much like a cat, the story goes full harem right out of the gate.

5. Wolf’s Rain

Blue, Wolf’s Rain

Wolf’s Rain has a unique feature: its protagonists are wolves. As if they’re just wolves who’ve figured out how to dress like humans.

Despite their lovely wolf ears, these are plain old humans. In order to avoid a human population that fears and hunts wolves, they don’t really care about showing off their cute ears for the camera. It’s still possible to discern which human character corresponds to each wolf based on hair color, facial expression, and other physical characteristics such as height. In terms of character design, it’s a work of art.

This is an older series, and it’s not going to make you happy. It’s gloomy, dreary, and at times unpleasant. But it has a charm and an originality about it that you won’t find in a lot of new anime. To begin with, the series is scored by none other than the legendary Yoko Kanno.

6. Utawarerumono

You don’t have to worry about your favorite animal being underrepresented in kemonomimi form.

In Utawarerumono, animals such as birds, foxes, tigers, and anything else you can think of are engaged in a bloody battle for supremacy. One of the best aspects of the series is the emphasis on real-world military tactics.

As a “protagonist’s amnesia” archetype, Hakuoro is caught in the center of all of this and must learn to traverse the world’s battlefields and political arenas.

7. Children

Hana had no idea the man she fell in love with was actually a werewolf! The fact that he was gay didn’t matter to her, because she was already in love with him and didn’t care what he was. They married and had two children, a boy and a girl who were half-wolves, but their father died too soon after they started a family.

In addition to parenting two children who are caught in the middle of two very different identities, Hana is also a single mother.

When Hana strives to raise children who can function in the modern world, Wolf Children is also a story of the maturation of those children and their quest to find their place in it.

8. Strike Witches

Strike Witches (2008)

Strike Witches, in comparison to Wolf Children, are noticeably less considerate. Aliens have conquered Earth in a post-World-war parallel universe.

The only way to stop the invasion, it appears, is to equip cat females with leg-mounted jetpacks and send them flying into battle. Looking back, this would have been a preferable outcome for all parties involved in World War II, but especially for the Japanese.

9. Loveless

Because cat ears aren’t just for girls, and kemonomimi characters aren’t just for (straight) boys to gawk at, we haveLoveless.

Everyone is born with cat ears and a tail in this reality. For the rest of their lives, they wear it. Therefore, the cat ears and tail have come to signify innocence and purity.

His brother has just died, and Ritsuka Aoyagi has no idea why. At least, that’s what he thinks. A man namedAgatsuma Soubi, who claims to have been his brother’s partner in a so-called “fighting pair,” suddenly appears. Agatsuma had made a promise to Ritsuka in the wake of his brother’s death: he will protect her.

Together, they set out to discover what really happened in the death of Ritsuka’s brother… They also become closer to each other in more personal ways.

10. Spice & Wolf

Spice & Wolf VR

The wolf goddess Holo travels with a spice merchant. At this point, we can go on to the meat of the article.

Only one other anime, Spice and Wolf, is primarily concerned with economy. There is a fair amount of mystery and action to be found. It’s Lawrence and Holo, a wandering trader with an extraordinary sense of intuition, who figure out together how to navigate markets and make the most money.

That’s just the beginning of the story. It’s interesting to see how their relationship develops and changes over the series; their initial ambitions are vastly different from where they end up. However, these developments are always depicted in the context of business and trade management in the background.

There probably isn’t anything quite likeSpice and Wolf, and Holo is one of the most known kemonomimi characters in anime.