Reviews Manga / Monster Musume

A Great Adaptation

I must say that I'm very favourably impressed to what Studio Lerche did to adapt Okayado's Monster Musume manga; I'll go on to say that it's probably the best adaptation the fans could hope for.

The animation was consistently good and in fact seemed to get better with the progression of the episodes (the last one is a treat), everything was very faithful to the manga pages (save for a couple moments of Character Development) and what little anime-only moments they put in were as sweet, funny and wacky as the original series. Even the censoring was done cleverly, without the usual cheap light rays or dark spots that plague those shows thet need to sell uncensored BDs.

The show doesn't disappoint from an aural standpoint either: both OP and ED are good enough (we need more hard rock in anime!), the sound design is definitely interesting (check out little stuff such as Tio lifting the vending machine or the ominous tapping sounds of Rachnera's legs) and most of all, every single VA does a top-notch job.

The voices are the strong point of the adaptation: they are all spot-on with the characters and in some cases they add a lot to the usually flat harem characters. Case in point: the transition between Lala's imperious chuuni mode and her normal meek self is hilarious, amazing and says so much more about her than a drawn page ever will.

There are also little ways of experimenting with the visual medium (such as the fake film during Rachnera's flashback to her host family, the Nico Nico-esque comments appearing when Miia is cooking in one episode, or the random Art Shift in ep.3) that go well beyond the usual lazy harem comedy adaptations. Not to mention the mockery of "Quality" animation they give at the end of the final episode!

In short: Bravo Lerche for keeping the tone of the original manga (weird, lewd, funny, sweet, bizarre and so on) and improving it with many little touches.

• Anime: 7/10
• Adaptation: 9.5/10