Nekopara is a series of adult visual novels you've most likely heard of in passing from post-post-post-ironic weeaboos online who wear Ahegao hoodies in public and think being horny is a personality trait. It's the funny anime game about the catgirl cafe that's garnered a status comparable to something like Bad Rats: a gag gift best sent to your friends during a Steam sale for a quick laugh (which is how I obtained my copy back in high school), or something you play so your "hilarious" Steam status pops up on your friend's screens during their CS: GO matches. In honor of the holiday, I thought "Hey, wouldn't it be funny if I played the porn game about cat girls and published a review on it online?", but while I slogged through one of the most joyless visual novels I've ever read, I came away with a lot to ruminate on betwixt the standard anime hijinks and incestuous little sister jokes.

Now obviously, Nekopara is porn, and if you came here expecting anything other than the world's most boring set-up to catgirl hentai, you were barking up the wrong tree. But as I was reading through lines and lines of filler text and moeblob cuteness, I found myself thinking about the common archetypes you find in the female characters written for this sort of media: the incestuous little sister romance, the (worryingly) child-like girl, or in Nekopara's case, pets. These all have a connective through-line, which is a lack of independent agency and an innate dependency on a superior of some kind (usually the self-insert main character of the story.) This throughline isn't something specific to Japanese media by any means, but these are just some of the few I noticed while reading Vol. 1.

The very concept of catgirls as they are written in Nekopara are a bastard child of the aforementioned archetypes mentioned previously: They're pretty explicitly stated in the text to be analogous to cats, displaying numerous cat-like mannerisms. They have a limited understanding of human society and abstract concepts (money, emotional awareness, etc.) and are even required to be "chipped" in a sense via the possession of an "Independent Action Permit", a mix between an ID and a Driver's License, in order to be allowed in polite society without being detained by Animal Control. They mature at roughly the same rate as a regular cat (it's stated offhandedly that a 6 month old catgirl is roughly equivalent to a 12 year old girl), but retain roughly the same intellect and mannerisms of a child. But most importantly for Nekopara's main intent, they can't bear human children, the existence of catgirl-human sexual relations is both normal and widely accepted alongside those who keep them as regular pets or family members in this society, and they are "excessively honest and uncomplicated", which means that emotional miscommunication and conflict basically never happens (unless its in service of anime tropes, like "jealous clingy tsundere").

What this means is that Nekopara's catgirls are the "idealized woman" for the target audience: a walking fleshlight in the shape of an girl, who has an innate attraction to the self-insert main character and will basically never reject them. A mirage of a character who only exists for pleasure. This is taken to the extreme in the context of Nekopara, in which the main character (who has helped raise the two leading catgirls ever since they were kittens and explicitly views them as daughters and family) enters a sexual relationship with what is essentially his pet cats/younger twin sisters, the ultimate fetishistic culmination of tropes to create the most dependent females possible for the express purpose of sexual pleasure. Incestuous threesomes and shower sex are sandwiched in-between the most trite rom-com anime scenarios and paragraphs of pure filler text to create the perfect visual novel for the modern-day weeb, the equivalent of a corporate blockbuster designed to appeal to the otaku equivalent of John Q. Public. This isn't an original conclusion by any means, and it's one that's not even necessarily a negative in terms of Nekopara's main goal (be titillating and provide comfort to its target audience), but it's telling that the series can basically excise the naughty 18+ bits from its story and still achieve success in other medium adaptations with little editing to the main girls' writing.

It's a formula that obviously works: Nekopara has numerous sequels, spinoffs and is one of the biggest rags-to-riches success stories to come from the eroge scene in recent memory. It's the kind of monumental success that makes someone with an ahegao anime girl avatar on Twitter thrust their arms towards the sky in joy to celebrate the "Based" culture of the Land of the Rising Sun, as if the success of an eroge where a guy sticks his dick in his pet cat is some kind of cultural dunk on the puritanical Westerners who would seek to deprive them of their catgirl waifus. Nekopara wasn't the first, nor was it the last time a bog-standard anime-flavored media property with weird sexual content and weirder fans is used as another lamppost for the proverbial moths to flock to. It's just another drop in the bucket as far as weeaboo culture is concerned.

Game = 1 star
VANIRA = 3 stars
Total = 4 stars

Just be sure to double check the headphones are connected, I'm sure you don't want to spoil the plot to your family/partner/love interest/roommates/coworkers

I have nothing but positive words to say about this game.

It has been a beacon for my healing mental state, every day for months I would feel extreme emotion about going home and being able to take care of my kittens. it was a constant cycle of anxiety whenever I left my house. I didn't want my kittens to think I didn't care for them but they seemed to understand that I needed to work and would wait patiently for me to get back home.

After some time though I couldn't take the anxiety and stress that was leaving my silly little nekos at home. I couldn't go a millisecond of my day without thinking about them. It got to the point where I was hearing their voices behind the counter of GameStop asking me to pet them. I couldn't hear my own thoughts and my ability to communicate with other people began to diminish.

It got to the point where I couldn't even talk to people anymore. The second I stepped out of my home I heard Chocola and Vanilla begging me to come back to them. I couldn't take it. I knew that they were ok with me leaving for work but I wasn't.

So good news!!! I quit!!! My anxiety and stress calmed after I was able to come back to my kittens and stay with them for my entire day. I decided to learn how to code in python, java, and c++ so I could supply for myself and my kittens from home. It was really stressful cramming 3 whole coding languages into my brain before the money my parents left me ran dry but I barely managed to make it finally landing a coding job after running out of money and eating nothing but dry cup noodles since my water was cut.

Life has never been better for me though. Constant feelings of joy while my catgirls are happy. My new job supplies more money than my old one and I just couldn't ask for a better situation. This game has completely revolutionized my life, making me a new person. my love for this game will never hit a limit as it is infinite. My love is ever-expanding like the universe. I genuinely cannot recommend this game more. It picked me up and put, me on my feet. it supported me through not only one mentally ill phase but two. And hey even though the second one was triggered by the game it is self, it was never to hurt me. I've never been healthier and happier. This game has brought me to new highs and even though it brought me close to a low it was only for my own good as afterwords I'm better than ever. please throw your money at this game, you won't regret it.

Nekopara's most important point is the rules that govern that world. The first rule is: There is no rule.
They are treated and act like humans when it is convenient and they are treated and act like cats when it is convenient.
The only thing to praise in Nekopara is the production of the game that is great, the sprites, voice acting and animation. The only horrible thing is the sex sound, oh my god what a terrible thing was that? A tip if you're going to play: Don't think, don't question, turn off your brain.