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Neko-de Gomen! (Sorry, I'm a Cat!) is a manga by Nagano Akane that ran in Shōnen Magazine from 1989 to 1990. Its plot focuses on a Ordinary High-School Student named Shiraishi Yayoi as she tries to live a normal life after being turned into a Cat Girl by her father's teleporter. Shortly thereafter, the ineffectual Mad Scientist Kuroda creates a very large Venus fly trap that ends up attacking the city. Seeing this on the news, Yayori's father decides to send her out to fight them as Super Cat Yayoi. Surprisingly, this works out rather well.

What follows is a hurricane of bizarre and often amusing situations, mostly caused by Kuroda's equally bizarre inventions and Yayori's new cat instincts. All the while, Yayoi tries to keep the fact that she's part cat a secret yet somehow manages to both fail spectacularly and succeed at the same time.


Neko-de Gomen! provides examples of:

  • Abhorrent Admirer: Eiko, to Masaru.
  • An Aesop: Outright delivered by Nagano Akane at the end of Chapter 13.note 
    Well, as they say... if you chase two rabbits, you will lose them both... let this be a lesson.
  • Almost Kiss: At the end of chapter 4, between Yayoi and Minoru.note 
  • Alpha Bitch: Meiko is this at first, when she harbors a crush on Minoru.
  • Amusing Injuries: Every time Yayoi attacks Shiraishi-sensei.
  • Baseball Episode: Chapter 16.
  • Be Careful What You Wish For:
    • Meiko in chapter 17 privately wishes for more attention to be given to her as she bathes in a unisex hot spring. Unfortunately for her, the ones who pay attention to her are a group of middle-aged and elderly men, resulting in her spending the rest of the chapter fighting them off.note 
    • Masaru makes many attempts to have Yayoi swayed to him. They always fail, and some of those attempts end up with him being the center of attention — from Eiko.
  • Beach Episode: Chapter 5.
  • Blind Without 'Em: Minoru has trouble seeing without his eyeglasses.
  • Breaking the Fourth Wall: Happens several times. Of particular note is in chapter 8 where Minoru ends up breaking the side of the panel.
  • Cat Girl: Yayoi, obviously.
  • Catapult Nightmare: Played for Laughs.
    • Yayoi jerks herself awake after reliving her moment of being unwillingly changed into a Cat Girl in her dream.
    • Minoru is shocked awake after dreaming of Yayoi becoming a Cat Girl.note 
    • Chapter 13 starts with Minoru rejecting Reiko by stating that Reiko looks monstrous, resulting in Reiko waking up screaming, calming down after realizing it was All Just a Dream.
  • Christmas Episode: Chapter 42.
  • Clingy Jealous Girl: Eiko, to Masaru, but it's Played for Laughs. It may also be played with in general in that everyone, males and females alike, gives Eiko a wide berth around her regardless of whether she's with Masaru or by herself.
  • Crazy Enough to Work: Send a high school Cat Girl out to fight mutant Venus fly traps? You bet it'll work!
  • Creepy Loner Girl: Eiko.
  • Cute Clumsy Girl: Yayoi until she turns into a Cat Girl.
  • Cute Little Fangs: Yayoi when in her Cat Girl form.
  • Diet Episode: Chapter 39 (titled "Fat Girl Yayoi...?") center around this, which starts after Minoru tactlessly asks her whether she had gained weight while viewing a picture of both of them. Yayoi is forced to concede Minoru is right after weighing herself at home, at which point she decides to go on a diet.
  • Didn't Think This Through: Chapter 12 starts with Yayoi asking her father for a doppelgänger robot due to her period of sexual arousal being present. Her father obliges, and the Yayoi robot goes to school in her stead... except he fails to discover in time that the program he put into the robot, which matches Yayoi's habit and behaviors, also included her sexual arousal period.
  • Face Fault: One time done in a pool.
  • Failure Is the Only Option:
    • Whatever invention Yayoi's father creates to reverse Yayoi's Cat Girl status will either fail to work or succeed until Yayoi needs to become a Cat Girl again, after which it ceases to work.
    • Anytime Kuroda concocts something to make money in order to escape the Perpetual Poverty status he and Reiko are stuck with, it's doomed to fail.
  • French Maid Outfit: What the uniform for the student cafe in chapter 9 becomes after being Playboy Bunnies.
  • Involuntary Shapeshifting: Yayoi has little control over when she has cat ears and tail and when she doesn't.
  • KidAnova: Masaru, a teenager himself, is quite popular with girls. He appreciates the popularity... as long as Eiko isn't around.
  • Kindhearted Cat Lover: Yayoi and Masaru.
  • Lemony Narrator: Starting with chapter 3, Nagano Akane starts to chime in with rather amusing notes.
  • Lie Detector: A face mask Yayoi's father invents in chapter 15 serves this purpose, as it SCREAMS the truth when its wearer attempts to lie. Then Yayoi finds it the next day and wears it to mitigate her hay fever, assuming it's just an ordinary face mask, on her date with Minoru...
  • Lovable Alpha Bitch: Meiko, initially an Alpha Bitch, becomes this trope once she stops chasing Minoru, as she is much more genuinely friendly to Yayoi while remaining as shallow and boy-crazy as ever.
  • Mad Scientist: Kuroda. Yayoi's father, meanwhile, is a more benign version of this.
  • Oh, Crap!:
    • Masaru has an epic one when Eiko shows up after he's been tied up in chapter 7.
    • Masaru also has this expression whenever he kisses Yayoi, only to find out "Yayoi" is Eiko in disguise.
    • Minoru gets this way when Yayoi looks drastically different from her usual (by his expectations, anyway) appearance. Most of the time it's due to her cat ears and tail showing themselves, but the end of chapter 12 has her doppelgänger robot, on the verge of self-destruction, appearing in Body Horror fashion.note 
    • Masaru has another epic moment of this at the end of chapter 13.note 
  • One True Love: Yayoi and Minoru consider each other this.
  • Ordinary High-School Student: Yayoi at first. The rest of her classmates as well.
  • Perpetual Poverty:
    • Kuroda and his daughter, Reiko, are stuck barely getting by despite Kuroda being a high school chemistry teacher.
    • Downplayed with Yayoi and her family, who, despite not rich like Minoru and Masaru's, can stay afloat better (Yayoi's father is a physics teacher in the same high school as Kuroda, though he has to keep paying off the mortgage on the house in which they reside).
  • Playboy Bunny: All of the girls dress up in the outfit for a student cafe in chapter 9.
  • Reed Richards Is Useless: The inventions made by Kuroda and Yayoi's father could change the world in many ways and make them very rich if they were to patent them and sell the designs to the proper company or the government.
    • The trope is played with in chapter 13, where Kuroda, after seeing the popularity his "cosmetic surgery gas" (it's applied the same way as one uses a perfume) causes Reiko, decides to sell it to the public, starting with the school, to enrich himself. Unfortunately for him, its side effect of causing the user to become much uglier than the user looks originally after some time passes ensures that he'll never get to do so again.
    • Yayoi's father's intention behind his creation of the teleporter is actually to get himself a Nobel Prize (and most likely enrich himself and his family as a result), but it's broken soon after use, so he can't have it patented. He manages to fix it in chapter 4, but it gets broken again at the end of the selfsame chapter, more permanently this time note .
  • School Festival: The cultural festival for the school kick-starts the events of chapter 9, which is titled "Youkai Festival".
  • Shipper on Deck: In chapter 6, Meiko arranges for Eiko to be with Masaru.note  Masaru is devastated when he discovers that he has kissed not Yayoi, but Eiko instead.
  • Shout-Out:
    • To The Fly (1986), due to the similarities in how humans got mixed with another creature via teleporter.
    • The uniforms worn by Kuroda and Yayoi's father in chapter 8 are very similar to the ones worn by the Ghostbusters and come complete with a Proton Pack.
  • Sibling Yin-Yang: The dynamic between Minoru and Masaru.
    • Minoru is socially awkward, sees Yaoyi as his One True Love, and considers any other girl he's around as Just Friends. Masaru is an outgoing, self-confident KidAnova who relishes the attention he attracts from many other girls who fawn over him — except for Eiko.
    • While they're raised in a rich household, Minoru is more frugal with his expenses (except for when he spends money going on a date with or buying presents for Yayoi), whereas Masaru isn't above buying fancy clothes for himself when he sees fit.
    • Minoru has a severe fear of cats, but Masaru loves them.
  • Stalker with a Crush:
    • Eiko pines for Masaru, oh-so-subtly. And that's when she's not being a Clingy Jealous Girl.
    • Masaru wants Yayoi ever since he discovers Yayoi's Cat Girl form, though Yayoi and Masaru are Just Friends as far as Yayoi is concerned.
    • Reiko wishes for Minoru's affection, even though Minoru has eyes only for Yayoi.
  • Take Over the World: This is Kuroda's goal for rather petty reasons (e.g. being able to afford better food choices like meat and never having to pay apartment rent and other outstanding bills — to escape Perpetual Poverty, in short).
  • Unnamed Parent: We don't know Kuroda (that's his family name) or Yayoi's father's first name.
  • Why Did It Have to Be Snakes?: Minoru is terrified of cats.
  • Yakuza: Make an appearance in chapter 7.
  • Youkai: Kuroda makes a serum that turns people into youkai that fits them best for ten hours in chapter 9.

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