Ramen Akaneko: Cats Serve Up a Bowl with a Slice of Life

What would be the most challenging thing cats would face if they ran a ramen shop? Holding cooking utensils? Taking orders? Burnt hair from kitchen fires? None of those! It’s keeping their cat hair out of the food. Cat owners know how futile that can be, no matter how much they brush their feline companions. Even the cats of the Red Cat Ramen shop agree. How do they solve it? In the new slice-of-life anime Ramen Akaneko, the head cat ramen chef hires a human girl, Tamako Yashiro, to assist his cat crew in serving cat lovers and ramen connoisseurs.

Ramen Akaneko marks the second summer of cats acting like humans in anime. GoHands produced The Masterful Cat is Depressed Again Today last summer. But Yukichi, the genius apartment caretaker, grew into a human-sized cat. The other difference between last year’s comedy was how his owner kept him a secret. For Ramen Akaneko, cats can speak and own businesses, but they stay cat-sized members of society.

However, Ramen Akaneko shares the slice-of-life humorous tone with last year’s cat show. Most funny bits will come from putting cats in situations people usually navigate. Each episode has two chapters and two omakes based on those separate halves. The vignette format makes the cat anime a source of relaxation and cat naps!

Ramen Akaneko Shop: Help Wanted, Dog Lover Preferred?

I believe Tamako Yashiro’s (Kurumi Orihara’s debut role) job interview was the second shortest I saw in anime this year. The shortest happened in Gushing Over Magical Girls when Venalita recruited Kiwi to his evil organization. Ramen Boss Bunzou (Kenjirou Tsuda, Tatsu from The Way of the Househusband) only asked Tamako if she liked cats. She answered that she preferred dogs! You’re hired! What? Sasaki (Noriaki Sugiyama, Uryuu Ishida from Bleach), the Ramen Akaneko office manager, explained how a human staff works better if they’re not like their cat-loving clientele. Employees should work instead of gushing over cutesy feline antics.

Besides, Hana (Rie Kugimiya, so many roles, including Happy from Fairy Tail) uses those feline antics to upsell extra toppings and pricier menu items. Ramen Akaneko even has a Bengal tiger named Krishna (Saori Hayami, Yor Forger from Spy × Family) who is so shy she makes the noodles behind the scenes and politely asks troublemakers to pay their bills and leave. Krishna’s gentle voice and hulking figure make a welcome running joke for the series.

Ramen Akaneko looked like it had solid traffic, repeat customers, and enough staff on, er, paw to bat around the food demand. Why did Bunzou ask for human help? Cat hair. Brushing cat hair to prevent shedding into people’s soup bowls. Human hands and arms are better at it than cats! Cats usually lick their bodies with their raspy tongues to collect hairballs (yuck!), but that wouldn’t fly in a restaurant setting.

Potential Pitfalls Besides Hairballs in your Ramen Akaneko

The show’s setting is a ramen shop, so you should expect food porn to whet your appetite. But Ramen Akaneko relies on CGI animation for the food and the characters at middle camera focal lengths. That’s slightly disappointing from E&H Production (Ninja Kamui), but we’re here for jokes about cats doing people things.

Ramen Akaneko (ラーメン赤猫, Red Cat Ramen) streams on Crunchyroll in Japanese audio and multiple language subtitles.

Are you ready for relaxing cat jokes inside a ramen shop? What do they do with all the tiger hairballs? And would you forgive a winking cat if you found its hair in your ramen? Let us know in the comments below!

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