REVIEW: Chi's Sweet Home (anime TV series)

Chi's Sweet Home is an adorable slice-of-life comedy. I watched the second season (series?), Chi's Sweet Home: Chi's New Address, six years ago, but between now and then I've also read the entire manga series. I picked up this particular boxed set during a sale and kind of wish I'd gotten the second one as well. I suppose I had a good reason not to, though. No shelf space!

Chi's Sweet Home adapts most of the first three volumes of the manga into 104 3-minute episodes. The Yamadas find Chi, a kitten that accidentally became separated from her family, and take her in despite living in an apartment that doesn't allow cats. They try to find a home for her but fail, and eventually realize they want to keep her themselves. Unfortunately, that may be a difficult decision to stick to if their apartment manager finds her and they're faced with the choice of either giving her away or being evicted.

Overall, the series is very light and gentle. There's the threat of Chi being discovered, Chi's occasional vague and slightly heartbreaking memories of her mother and siblings, and the part where Chi was accidentally locked outside during a severe storm. That's about it as far as stressful content goes, and even that stuff is depicted as gently as possible. There are no cats in Chi's Sweet Home that get run over by cars, or die of old age (or anything else for that matter).

REVIEW: Chi's Sweet Home (manga, vol. 12) by Konami Kanata, translated by Ed Chavez

This post contains lots of spoilers (right down to the description).

The Yamadas are going to France, and they have a difficult decision to make: should they notify Chi's original owner that they have her, or should they just continue on as they have been? The decision is basically made for them when they find Chi's mom, hurt after being hit by a car (don't worry, she's fine). Although Yohei is resistant, the Yamadas eventually give Chi up to her original owner. What they didn't count on was that Chi would miss them enough to try to go find them.

I probably wouldn't have minded if this series had gone on to be as massive as Skip Beat! or Naruto, so I was a little sad to have reached this final volume. My expectations were also maybe a bit too high. In the end, I felt this volume was a little too rushed and pushed some of its emotional buttons a bit too hard.

Chi's Sweet Home (manga, vol. 11) by Konami Kanata, translated by Ed Chavez

Mrs. Yamada and Yohei briefly leave for a trip to Hokkaido, causing Chi to wonder if they've been taken away to a new home. They do come back, but Chi can't stop thinking about the whole “other home” thing. She keeps almost remembering her other home. Then she meets her real mom, who calls her Sarah, and Yohei discovers a “lost” poster with a picture of Chi on it. Mr. Yamada is going to be taking a job in France, so the family is running out of time to decide whether or not to return Chi to her original owner.

I can't believe this series will be over in only one more volume. I'll miss Chi and her adorable antics.

That said, this wasn't one of the better volumes in the series. There was a bit more anthropomorphizing than I'd have liked. Also, the increase in potential heartbreak made me long for the earlier volumes, when it was all just about the Yamadas learning to live with a cat and Chi running around doing kitten things. When I read this series, I'm looking for happy and uncomplicated fluff, darn it. Instead, I got a mama cat who's been missing her baby and looking for her all this time and the Yamadas contemplating moving to an entirely different country.

Chi's Sweet Home (manga, vol. 9-10) by Konami Kanata, translated by Ed Chavez

Chi's Sweet Home is one of my favorite slice-of-life and animal series. It's the manga equivalent of a warm, snuggly blanket. Chi and the other animals are wonderful, and the Yamadas are a nice family that manages not to be too cutesy, despite the fact that nothing all that bad ever seems to happen to them.

I plowed through a huge chunk of this series during my vacation the year before, so it was nice to be able to continue from where I left off.

Once again, a warning: my synopses include some spoilers. Read on at your own risk.

Chi's Sweet Home (manga, vols. 2-8) by Konami Kanata

Chi's Sweet Home is a nice, sweet series that's perfect for cat lovers. If you don't mind stories that are about little more than watching a family care for a cat and seeing that cat do kitty things, you might want to try this out.

One thing that surprised me about these volumes was how different it became from what I remembered of the anime. Both the anime and manga feature Chi doing kitty things and meeting new friends, but the exact things that happen are different, at least based on what I remember. One development in the manga that I don't remember being in the anime at all is the possibility that Chi might actually meet her family again. I don't know when/if Kanata will have this happen, but I want to read it!

Read on for spoiler-filled synopses of each volume, plus a few more comments.

I'm back!

My vacation was nice, and now I'm trying to get used to being in my own apartment again. I posted absolutely nothing while I was gone (I didn't even check my email!), although I read lots and lots, and even watched a few TV shows with my mom and dad. I figure I'll do something much like the posts I wrote after my last vacation - one post per manga series, rather than per volume, with no promises that I'll write about everything.

Here's what I got through, along with brief comments in case I don't get around to writing posts:

Chi's Sweet Home - Chi's New Address (anime TV series), via Crunchyroll

At 104 episodes total, this seems, at first, like a massive series. However, each episode is approximately 3 minutes long, so the entire thing is really only a bit over 5 hours long.

Synopsis:

Season 1 (episodes 1-26): Mr. and Mrs. Yamada face a tough decision when a girl in Hokkaido offers to take Chi. Their apartment doesn't allow pets, but they are to the point where they feel like Chi is a member of the family. Finally, they opt to move to a pet-friendly apartment. There, they introduce themselves to their new neighbors, and Chi meets the neighbors' pets: a large bunny, a parakeet, a friendly dog, and a regal longhair Scottish fold cat. Chi briefly gets lost exploring her new neighborhood, but she manages to find her way home again.

Season 2 (episodes 27-52): Chi explores her new neighborhood some more, gets to know the neighbors' pets (including the parakeet), and meets several other cats. The Yamadas continue to learn how to better take care of Chi, which includes figuring out how to brush her teeth and learning how to best travel with her.

Season 3 (episodes 53-78): More of Chi in the new neighborhood. I don't think there's anything specific that defines this season. Chi spends a lot of time with local cats, including one that behaves in an almost motherly way towards her, but I think these local cats showed up in Season 2 as well. The season ends with the entire Yamada family, including Chi, going to Hokkaido to visit Juri (the girl Chi was almost given to in Season 1) and her family.

Season 4 (episodes 79-104): Chi and the Yamadas spend time in Hokkaido. Then the whole family goes back home and has their usual day-to-day experiences - the biggest thing I can remember is that, for what may be the first time, we finally get to see Mr. Yamada doing work-related things. Near the end of the season, Chi accidentally hitches a ride on a truck and gets horribly lost. The Yamadas begin to lose hope that they'll ever see Chi again, but, luckily, Chi finds help along the way.

Review:

Initially, I had planned on writing separate posts for each season. However, the individual seasons didn't seem to be different enough from each other to warrant that treatment.

I have still only read one volume of the manga, and, when I realized that Chi's Sweet Home: Chi's New Address was actually the sequel to the anime Chi's Sweet Home (which I haven't seen and which is also 104 episodes long), I was worried that I might be lost. It was quickly apparent, however, that Chi's New Address was newbie-friendly. All you needed to know was that the Yamadas lived with a kitten named Chi in an apartment where they couldn't have cats, and, even then, the Yamadas move almost immediately after the start of the series. Later on, the series also brings in an old friend of Chi's. I hadn't yet gotten to the point in the manga where he was introduced, and his and Chi's reunion might have been richer for me if I had, but at no time did I feel lost or confused.

Chi's Sweet Home (manga, vol. 1) by Konami Kanata

If you like cats and if you like reading graphic novels and/or manga or have ever considered reading graphic novels  and/or manga, you must try this series. Really, you must. Unlike most manga you can find in stores and at the library now, you won't even need to learn how to read panels from right to left - manga newbies will be relieved to find that Vertical flipped this series so that it can be read from left to right.

Synopsis:

Chi, a little gray kitten, is separated from her family after she is distracted by a bird. Alone in a dangerous world filled with dogs and fast-moving cars, Chi doesn't know what to do. Hungry and exhausted, she is found by Mrs. Yamada and her young son, Yohei.

Although the Yamada family takes Chi in, they don't, at first, intend to keep her, mainly because pets aren't allowed in their apartment. However, they can't find anyone willing to take Chi, and she's so young they don't want to put her back outside on her own. Despite the risk of eviction, they decide to keep her.

This is a slice-of-life series, so everything that goes on is ordinary, everyday stuff. The Yamada family feeds Chi, bathes her, names her, litter box trains her, plays with her, takes her to the vet...you get the idea. In this first volume, the family has a few moments when their new kitten is almost discovered (the landlady hears Chi meow when Mr. Yamada is preparing to take her to the vet, and Chi develops a love for sitting on the windowsill), but luck and a bit of cleverness keeps them in the clear.

Commentary:

As you can tell from the way I began this post, I think very highly of this series so far. True, not much goes on, but Chi is delightful. If you have ever lived with a cat, you will probably find quite a bit of Chi's behavior and the Yamada family's experiences to be familiar. And, if you're like me, you may find yourself wishing you could have a big Chi poster to plaster on one of your walls.