Mii-chan wa Kawaretai
Mii-chan Wants to Be Kept

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It might be too early to review this manga since there's only 11 chapters released at the moment, but there isn't any redflag so far and the story seems to follow an interesting path, therefore, I'm pretty confident this manga will remain good in the long run, and that's why I recommend it.

The plot is both simple and funny/cute, a 17 years old human girl that can transform into a cat meets a 30ish man and decides to live in his flat, making him her "owner". Let me reassure you, this isn't a degenerate manga, there is fanservice here and there, but the story ... isn't trying to promote weird relationships, it's going for tthe fatherly vibe, or something like a guardian vibe. It reminds me a lot of HigeHiro that has a similar relationship between the two MCs.

In parallel with this funny cat transformation thing, tthe author is also planning to create a lore regarding that, and it sounds promising, it helps the reader care more about the story, now we can't know for sure at the moment that this will lead to something coherent, but at least the author is trying to thicken the plot.

Lastly, the art is really good. Whether you'll click with the style or not is subjective, but the panels are nice and detailed. The character design could be more original but it's good enough.

All in all, really pleaant read so far, Mii-chan wa Kawaretai starts off as a cute story about cats, it's a really good beginning in romcom standards, and we can be hopeful for the rest of the series, since it seems like the author will build a plausible universe to explain all this lore about cats, and if it's done well, this might become a solid romcom in the next years.

( I rate it 8/10 because there isn't a lot of chapters, but I'd probably have rated this 9/10 if it had 40 chapters with the same level of quality for instance )

Waka Takase, also known as Yorumo Hatarako, is an interesting mangaka. They skirt around target demographics with ease - from seinen to shoujo to some josei sprinkled in, too. The author loves the age gap trope in condensed chapter form - from OL x Cute University Boy (8-year gap) to Waitress X Police Officer (14-year gap), their works explore the dynamics in a short and somewhat playful manner.

'Mii-chan Wa Kawaretai' is the latest ongoing series from Takase-sensei, and it started off rather well.

The concept isn't groundbreaking, but the communication dynamics, art style, and characters all gel well with each other. It's good to see ... a male lead who is a functional, working adult instead of the more common NEET-mangaka-trying-to-make-it-big (or equivalent) a lot of self-insert mangas try to throw at readers. Snore.

The cats are also cute, duh.

The series might have been considered wholesome were it not for two plot aspects the author introduced early on. First, the age gap here. Unlike Takase-sensei's previous works, this one forces the dynamics into an extremely unbalanced Adult x Adolescent paradigm. Second, there's the 'Must-do-before-adulthood Rule' introduced for the female lead's existence as a human/cat hybrid. I won't elaborate what it is, but you'll meet it early on anyways.

Some might not mind this (the series being fiction and all), but these two decisions leave a tacky taste in my mouth. Especially considering that the author can do, and has done better- without a plot point already covered by many other wish-fulfillment/self-insert series.

That said, I think if anyone can subvert expectations and cliches, it's Waka Takase. I hope (and believe) that at least the second plot point will be turned out on its head. If that happens, I'd increase the score of this series to 8. If the plot point persists, that'd be a hard 6 from me, and the 'Mixed Feelings' tag will remain.

As it currently stands, 'Mii-chan Wa Kawaretai' is a solid 7. The male lead x female lead banter is funny and cute, I can see a great cast of side characters on the horizon, and the concept so far ties well into the story, instead of being shoehorned in. And as always, Takase-sensei's art can be simple at times but remains very expressive and entertaining to look at.

One of the basic Premises of "Mii-chan wa Kawaretai" is that there is a family of women that turn into literal house cats at night, and if they don't have sex with someone before they turn 18 then they will be permanently transformed into a housecat...

This premise is...questionable to say the least; The author decided that having a universe where women are systematically forced to have sex before they turn 18 at the threat of losing their, literal, humanity comes across as poorly thought out at best and downright creepy at worst. The implications of this premise, if thought about for more then a minute, ... are far darker then the atmosphere this manga projects.

However, plenty of manga have changed, retconned, or just abandoned their starting premise before and have done just fine. Well...the author not only doesn't do that, he doubles down on it, for some reason. Nearly every chapter the female lead is reminded of the fact she needs to have sex soon, so there's no way to ignore the premise or try and tune it out.

Then, we have the other "aspect" to the story, the age gap. The female lead is 17, and the male lead is in his mid 30's. Now normally the dynamic between characters with this kind of age gap would be something like a father/daughter or brother/sister dynamic, but the author, once again, insists otherwise. The atmosphere of the two main characters is not familial love, but explicitly romantic and sexual.

Mii-can is constantly sexualized and placed into sexual situations with the male lead. Often she lays in his bed barely clothed, attempts to seduce and flirt with him, and is just generally implied to be in love with him. Being naked in his bed is literally a running joke in the manga, even if the male lead doesn't view her romantically at first, it is clear that Mii-chan does, and that the author intends their relationship to be romantic.

So we have these two aspects to the manga, the premise and age gap. I seriously think roughly 40% of the dialogue in the manga is dedicated to these two aspects of the story. Someone is constantly reminding Mii-chan she has to have sex, or joking about the age gap of the two protagonists. It's just so staggeringly omni-present in the writing. The rest of the story suffers immensely because of it. Characters are bland and cliche. There's no development, drama is entirely surface level, and the romantic moments are shallow, the "cute" moments are standard romcom affair, and the humor seems to have zero self awareness.

It feels as if this entire story exists to serve the age gap present in the story. Like the author is rushing to draw the attention back to it by having it be mentioned or joked about so often. It feels like this is a fetish manga, and this is partially supported by the fact that all the author's previous works also have age-gap romances as the centerpiece. The fact is, even if these two characters didn't have a 15+ year age gap, this story wouldn't work because that age gap is literally all there is to this story.

There are better manga that do romance, comedy, and fanservice without having a creepy premise and a blatant fetish smothering the other aspects of the story. At the end of the day, "Mii-chan wa Kawaretai" is about a romance between a 17 year old girl and a 30 year old man. The manga's writing refuses to let you forget about it, and constantly flaunts this because that is all it really has, and it's creepy.