Sometimes I’ll watch a premiere just based on the cast, and Cat God is one of those instances. To be honest it looks like a throwawy series, but given that the two main characters represent Haruka Tomatsu and Yui Horie – one of my current favorites and possibly my all-time favorite seiyuu – cutting up in very silly roles I had to at least give it a look.

You see this sometimes in anime – what looks like a feather light series with a ridiculously star-studded cast. In addition to Tomatsu (Cross Game, AnoHana) and Horie (Kanon, Fruits Basket) we also have Kayano Ai (Menma in AnoHana), Sanpei Yuko (Renton in E7, Hajime in Natsu no Arashi), Ito Kanae (Ohana in HanaIro), Mako (Yurie in Kamichu), Tanaka Rie (countless huge roles)… It just goes on and on. Not only that, but we have a big-time director in Sakurai Hiroaki (Cromartie High, Di Gi Charat). So for all that firepower, is the series much more than it seems at first glance?

Well – not really, no. At least not yet. It’s amusing, very cute and innocuously likeable, but doesn’t seem to be packing any secret substance to it. In brief (and that’s about all you could muster) it’s a show about very cute chibi Cat Gods living amongst the mortals in Tokyo. Tomatsu plays the heroine, Mayu, exiled to Earth by her stern Mom for being generally irresponsible. Horie plays her human assistant/follower Yuzu. Sanpei is Gonta,  the guardian deity madly in love with Yuzu, and Kayano is Sasana, another Goddess engaged to Mayu because both fathers thought the other girl was a boy.

There’s lots of other fluffy Nekogami running around, including the Poverty God who provides the plot driver of the first episode. the whole thing has a certain charm to it, but it certainly doesn’t look like there’s anything of real consequence going on here. We’ve seen Gods reduced to scrimping for dinner money before, but it is interesting to hear so many anime legends delivering this dialogue and having a good time doing it. I’ll keep watching for a while, though I doubt I’ll blog it unless the show really surprises me in some way over the next few eps.