This review is based on the first four episodes of a 12-episode season that will stream on Crunchyroll starting July 6, 2025.

Appropriately timed for a zombie movie revival led by 28 Years Later, Nyaight of the Living Cat is a parody anime that is as adorable as it is fun to watch. Yes, this show is hilarious, and is clearly made by people who are fans of not just the zombie genre, but horror – with several references to classics like The Thing and Alien, but with cats.

That’s the key to the premise: it is not about how long our protagonists Kunagi, Kaoru, Tsutsumi, Tanishi, and Gaku can simply avoid the creatures hunting them, but rather if they can resist the temptation to embrace doom and pet a cat again. That’s because this particularly absurd apocalypse is brought upon by a plague transmitted by cats that turns everyone they come in contact with into more cats. As a zombie story, this is brilliantly inventive, as each character is heartbroken by the prospect of having to run away from the animal they love most. Likewise, Nyaight of the Living Cat uses knowledge of cats and cat lovers to create a new set of zombie rules for the show: using water to evade the infected animals, catnip to distract them, or even using an allergy as a way to detect nearby felines.

Like any good zombie story, Nyaight of the Living Cat has a good blend of thrills and emotions, with each of the first four episodes focusing on one character’s backstory, their relationship to cats, and how the furry apocalypse is impacting them. There’s a healthy amount of emotion that makes it easy to feel for them before they face their fate. There is also a mystery element to the story, with some mythology choices that make this apocalypse more than just a funny gimmick. Particularly, the character of Kunagi and his amnesia makes for the start of a fascinating plotline – now we just have to see if it pays off.

Granted, this is by no means an actual horror show, so don’t expect terrifying jump scares as much as the surprise sight of a delightful kitten (and about a dozen others behind it). In a way, Nyaight of the Living Cat does work as a traditional zombie show, with the ambient sense of danger, the survivors grouping up before being killed off one by one, the person who does something stupid and dies, inept militaries, and just about every other cliche you could name. Still, seeing all of those played out but with cats instead of rotting corpses is an effective novelty that doesn’t lose steam – at least, it hasn’t in the first four (out of a total of 12) episodes I’ve seen so far.

There’s a fantastic scene in the third episode straight out of Shin Godzilla, in which we see a boardroom meeting of military and political leaders trying to come up with a plan against the zombie plague, only to get derailed by gushing about how much they love cats and how perfect they are. There’s even a tough army dude describing them with such praise it sounds like Ash from Alien describing the xenomorph. There is nothing the people in power can do, not because there are more zombies than soldiers, but because no one would dare hurt a cat, rendering all weapons moot.

Legendary director Takashi Miike’s style can be felt throughout in how he employs campiness and cartoonish animation for the sake of accentuating the weirdness or the fantasy of the story. It works rather well in this show, with the close ups of the hordes of cats shot like they’re both absolute monsters but also the greatest work of art, adding to the humor.

Nyaight of the Living Cat screenshots