It was difficult to call it until I watched through it a second time, but The Hentai Prince and the Stony Cat is a pretty good anime.
The plot follows Yokodera Youto, who is for all intents and purposes, a massive pervert like ninety percent of guys his age. Plot stuff ensues with the main female character Tsukiko before they make their wishes at the mystical Stony Cat statue that apparently grants wishes in exchange for an offering, and the anime follows them as they discover whether or not the wishes have solved their problems or made them worse.
Now, it is a 7/10 on the fanservice-orientated scale for a harem anime, so almost everything is tied to a gag, but that comes with this genre. The morals of the story are relatively easy to predict but the story itself manages to be quite charming and pokes at mature themes and self discovery through a youthful lens. I was really surprised with the maturity of the story line, yet I never found it boring and it retained its jovial and childish charm in a way that kept it from being overbearingly cliche.
What the show ended up lacking on is what most of this genre end up doing; leaving out important information and having plot holes. A large amount of information seems to be pulled out from nowhere or just not looked into enough. It throws you when a character would bring up something like it’s common knowledge and you can’t remember when (or if) it was brought up
The story line is ludicrous at best, but it runs with it. Pertaining to the show, it splits up into three or four parts. Essentially we start with Tsukiko losing her emotions thing and then you’re introduced to Azusa and her wishing for stuff. So essentially as the show progresses you see Youto have to deal with various issues with various characters. Up to episode five, the plot has progressed if anything a little slowly but still smoothly, and the last four episodes begin to rush to a certain point of the plot and I felt like more time was needed. The last episode, however, is very enjoyable as we finally get the backstory for Youto. One final and well timed joke, the fourth-wall break at the very end just makes it, drawing back to the comedy aspect as the last two episodes sported a much more mature energy.
The animation in the show is really good thanks to the character models and the lighting. Each character is very detailed and has consistent quality throughout the entire season. Also, the eyes are extremely well done. There are many scenes where characters will seem more believable just because of how they are looking towards each other. The colour palette was pretty good in my opinion; nothing looked bland and the backgrounds were pretty good.
The main star focus of the sound in this anime are the voice actors. Even through Tsukiko was monotone for about ninety percent of the show, just the way her voice actor presented herself with the different mannerisms made her character’s performance much more believable. The rest of the case also did a great job, especially Youto. As for the soundtrack for the anime, all i can say is that it was pretty average. Other than the catchy opening song, everything else was fairly average in comparison; nothing really jumped out and shook me.
If you’re one who can’t sit through a slow-paced and relatively cheesy harem comedy, then you might find it difficult to sit all the way through a binge watch, but the story does evolve as it goes on and develops a new dynamic that really pulls together towards the end. The Hentai Prince and the Stony Cat may seem like a nonsense harem comedy and yes the MC is a huge perv, but beneath that facade, there is a deeply moving and heart-felled anime that I found refreshingly enjoyable to watch.
A review copy was provided by Madman Entertainment to the author for the purpose of this review.
