Takumi Tsuzuki lives and works with his adoptive older sister Otome at the bakery cafe Stray Cats, along with his childhood friend Fumino Serizawa. Their lives are fairly normal until Otome brings home a beautiful girl with long purple hair who looks like a cat and even goes "nya". After some initial trouble, the girl, Nozomi Kiriya, eventually stays at the Tsuzuki residence. There's also the resident rich blonde snob Chise Umenomori, who treats Takumi like her slave, and Takumi's friends Ieyasu Kikuchi and Daigoro Kouya.

Mayoi Neko Overrun! is a title from Anime International Company, AIC for short. You might remember them as the studio behind such anime as the Tenchi Muyo franchise, Oh My Goddess, Battle Athletes, Record of Lodoss War, My Bride is a Mermaid and Bamboo Blade. However, it goes downhill when you learn that their most recent stuff before Mayoi Neko Overrun! included Meow Love and Heaven's Lost Property and they're the ones who cursed us with Girls Bravo. They went on to almost redeem themselves with Cat Planet Cuties, Persona 4: The Animation and Humanity Has Declined...only to overshadow those by also doing a sequel to Heaven's Lost Property and making shit like OreImo, The Blessing of Campanella, R-15, Maken Ki, Haganai, Kotoura-san, Day Break Illusion and Love, Election and Chocolate. In other words, they're a recurring source of about a dozen of the worst anime I covered in the early 2010s. They then basically disappeared in 2014, resurfacing just briefly in 2021 to put out a Battle Athletes remake. I know I'm sounding highly negative right off the bat, but it's hard not to when I'm reviewing a dumbass 2009 harem romcom by AIC. A show has to really stand out in this crowded world of anime, this has been true for close to 20 years now, and Mayoi Neko Overrun! unfortunately only stands out because it's so bad that it makes half the other shitty harem anime I've reviewed almost look better by comparison. Almost.

Let's talk about the characters first. The characters in Mayoi Neko Overrun! come in four categories: Annoying, selfish, useless and outright despicable. The worst by far is the mean-spirited Fumino, who's an awful character in general and a terrible person to others. Not only is she unlikeable and unsympathetic, but she's also written using the Mora Linda character development model, where any and all character development involving her is washed away literally seconds after happening, or almost happening. Even her character design sucks, and she also has a "cute" character trait in that she says the opposite of what she means and sounds pissy nearly every time she opens her mouth.

Next we have Chise, both the lolicon bait of the series and the resident poorly written ojou-sama. When she's not talking down to others or calling everyone her servants, she's throowing temper tantrums over things not going her way. It's also "thanks" to her that the Stray Cats Club is established, which I'll get into more detail about later. However, unlike Fumino, Chise sometimes shows kindness and compassion to others, mainly one specific girl. These are among the more tolerable parts of the series, but it's never long before Fumino utterly ruins them.

The last main girl is Nozomi, a stoic, busty girl whose hair forms shapes that look vaguely like cat ears, and she says "nya" and does little cat paws with her hands and stuff. Let's be real, her only purpose is catgirl fetish fanservicel. And yet she's still BY FAR the most likeable of the three, if only because she's the only one who doesn't treat Takumi like crap and treats others with respect.

Oh yeah, gotta mention Takumi. Well, he's not really a full-fledged character, more like a tool for the girls to use. He and Fumino were childhood "friends" in an orphanage, and the last two there before it closed down. Ironically, it's thanks to his horrible mantra "If someone hurts you, pay them back twice!" that Fumino became the raging bitch she is today, and it's why she yells "Die twice!" at him when angry.

Takumi also has an older sister, the humongously busty Otome, who adopted him when he was little. She's the owner of the cafe he and Fumino work at, but she's often too busy helping other people to pay attention to the place or the teenagers left in her care. Mind you, this is used as a running gag, just like the one where any bra she wears pops off. There are at least two major instances where she flat-out leaves the other characters for dead to attend to some asinine request from people as far as HUNDREDS of miles away when they need her most. Wow, what a great caretaker! Maybe if this joke was used once, and only once, it might be amusing, but they beat it to death. Why? Because Mayoi Neko Overrun! doesn't know or care about comedic timing or restraint. This lack of restraint shows itself in the writing, which jumps from plot point to plot point like a flea on crack. One episode they're filming a commercial, another they're doing a mecha parody, another they're playing a perverted game of Jenga called Power Blocks, and then another there's a sports festival. It's like watching those lame Saturday morning cartoons from the 80s that took ideas from everything else instead of making their own. Hell, it fails at even doing that competently. In episode 6, the commercial filming one, there's a joke about how they shoot various seasons at completely inappropriate locations, such as a winter scene in the middle of a desert. Episode 7, the mecha episode, is meant to be a parody, but it's played so straight that it fails completely at its objective. They even managed to fuck up parodying fighting games--having your characters simply pose and move kinda like you imagine fighting game characters would doesn't make it funny. And don't even get me started on the Power Blocks bit, or the asinine bloomers vs bike shorts debate that takes up the final two episodes.

The show fails just as hard when it comes to drama. You're supposed to feel bad for Takumi and Fumino being orphans, but Fumino is such an awful character that she destroys any and all emotional investment. Too often you'll wonder why Takumi even talks to a girl who does NOTHING but belittle him and both physically and mentally abuse him. For example, in episode 9, when they have to stop on an island to hide from the rain, all she does at first is yell at him, telling him to go get the boat in the middle of a storm. When the two are forced to stay there for the night, all she does is yell at him some more for simply looking at Nozomi earlier that day, as well as forcing him to promise to not do anything lewd or stupid. He agrees to this...and this makes her cry, call him "the worst" and move away from him. Later, when they talk under the stars, Fumino talks to Takumi as if he isn't there, and then yells at him for "leaving her". And we never find out why she does this.

Episode 10 has the girls finding another girl named Honoka, who Otome mistakenly thinks is an orphan and brings to the cafe. She's revealed not to be one, but her character allows Fumino, Chise and Nozomi to realize again that they're all "stray cats" themselves. An almost touching scene is ruined by the arrival of Takumi, who spent the whole episode with his friend Ieyasu learning the ways of the otaku. When he returns home with a backpack full of anime and manga, Fumino (of course) punches him into the air once again. Thanks, Mayoi Neko Overrun!, for destroying the one actual moment in this series that involved more than three minutes of genuine emotion in its cast! It's like eating your favourite dinner cooked to perfection and served exactly how you like it best and finishing it with a months-old half-eaten tub of freezer-burnt ice cream!

I know I'm being harsh, but I honestly want to know why I should give a fuck about any of this when the show itself doesn't. It's like the staff got together after episode 3 and declared no more story until episode 9, which ends up being the single worst episode. The sole interesting aspect--the constant switching of writers, directors and key animators for every episode--is lost due to Fumino destroying the entire series all by herself, making even characters like Chise and Ieyasu look like angels. All the staff share one thing though: Not a single team can tell more than two decent jokes (if that) per episode. Even acclaimed director Junichi Sato fails to pry us from the comedic schlock in the final episode, though he fares a little better than most of the previous directors do.

You'd think that the show, if nothing else, would at least have good eye candy, right? Well, the character designs are decent at best, and the fanservice is kinda just the stock expected material of the time with nothing all that noteworthy, lots of gratuitous panty shots, big nipple-less boobs getting exposed, etc. The backgrounds are bland and forgettable, and the animation never goes beyond something worthy of a mediocre passing grade. The music is about as exciting and memorable as tap water, and the opening and closing numbers are just flat-out bad. I could talk about more aspects of the series, such as Chise's two CG maids that present the next episode previews and are more amusing than the series itself a good deal of the time, but I think I've said enough by now.

Mayoi Neko Overrun! is supposed to be a series about metaphorical stray cats finding a home. Takumi and Fumino have no parents, Chise's are never around, and Nozomi is a stray catgirl of sorts. Unfortunately, this potentially touching found family message is lost on a barrage of unfunny jokes, lousy writing, uninspired fanservice, and an infuriating, despicable female lead and her flat, terribly written love interest. When your show's most likeable character in your series is the one who's just there for catgirl fetish fuel, you know you have a problem.

In short, avoid this series. It's an insult to humans and cats alike. If you want to watch a good anime about or featuring cats or catgirls, there are COUNTLESS better option out there. Christ, you'd have several times more fun watching random cat videos on YouTube.