Review by Frank Plowright
The trial adoption period is over, and Riko’s is now a two-cat household, with the younger Soboro now getting along fine with Musabi, who we’ve been following since the series began. The first volume also established Watanu Nadatani’s formula of nine shortish chapters with the maximum amount of illustrations featuring cats being cute. This volume, however, features ten stories.
Cat + Gamer 5 included a story about cats shedding fur, and that’s where Nadatani begins. However, it’s been a long time since we’ve seen Riko actually playing a game, and there’s a couple of pages featuring one here. It offers multiple choices regarding the lead character, and Riko sees how that applies to the current conflict with the cats.
With the milestone of Christmas mentioned in the previous book and mention of new year here, Nadatani seems to be following a timeline, and she also has Riko remark how Musabi has grown since he first arrived. The chapters continue to be numbered sequentially, this volume including chapters 46 to 55, but there’s no special celebration for the milestone of chapter 50, which is just the annoyance of Musabi clawing at a room door while Riko is playing a game.
New to this volume is all stories having a brief bonus page section in which a scene is replayed, but instead of being from Riko’s viewpoint they feature the thoughts and dialogue of the cats. The best use of them is a reveal following ‘Bug Discovery’ in which we discover just why Musabi’s claws were stuck in the curtain. It’s a clever play on words accompanying Riko discovering a bug in her game.
One wonders whether Nadatani researches devices for cats, because she features some beauties. The best here is a remotely controlled device that rolls around the floor and distracts the cats while also dispensing food.
The quality of Cat + Gamer has been consistently good from the start, with Nadatani’s excellent art applied to amusing little stories, although, as ever, the appeal is going to be greater for cat lovers. On to Cat + Gamer 7.
