Monster Girl Anime - The Monster Review · 3:09pm Apr 6th, 2021
I watched Everyday Life With Monster Girls for the sake of Estee's crossover, and found some striking similarities with both Interviews with Monster Girls and Monster Girl Doctor.
This series features a human male protagonist surrounded by girls of various monstrous lineages. Each is a cute girl incarnation of a classic mythical monster.
A key focus is how the differing biology of the monsters affects their behaviour and social life. Cold-blooded species seek warmth, aquatic species struggle on land, etc. At the same time they may struggle to fit into society due to their differences, but they are each good people in their own way; and the protagonist is able to help them be their true selves.
At the same time, this series is a harem. Each of the monster girls clearly has their own reason to hang around with the human male protagonist, regardless of biological compatibility. While there's clearly a lead haremette, the guy doesn't make an actual choice at any point, so instead he has to juggle a full harem of monster girls with all their quirks - while remaining quite blind to the feelings of those closest to him. He's unusually open minded, though, and in several ways more virtuous than the average human.
Relations between humans and monsters haven't always been positive in this world - in fact the new, peaceful status quo is quite fragile. The protagonist and his companions are on the cutting edge of human-monster relations. He's watched closely by the powers that be to see if everything works out.
The choice of monster girl to include in the series and their character design are undeniably made to be attractive. Species that feature at least a human face and torso are preferable to those that are completely alien. There are no human haremettes of note - it's a given that the protagonist will have to love a monster.
There's a uniquely Japanese bent to the setting - in many ways, this story wouldn't play out the same way in any other location. At the same time, the girls' monstrous nature leads to a frankness that's unusual in Japanese culture.
Seriously, these series all have so much in common it's unnerving.
Monster Girl Doctor and Everyday Life With Monster Girls both feature a lamia as lead harmette; the second being a centaur, and other haremettes include a harpy, though she's too dumb to take seriously, a mermaid and a spider-taur. Seriously, where do spider-taurs even come from? The oldest one I can think of is Lolth.
Interviews with Monster Girls and Everyday Life With Monster Girls are set in something like present-day Japan, following the integration of monstrous races that previously lived in secret. Both include a Dullahan, and a government agent tasked with keeping an eye on the integration - who has a talented demi-human working with them.
Everyday Life With Monster Girls is the most fanservicey. Interviews with Monster Girls is the least. Monster Girl Doctor is somewhere in between.
Are they any good, though?
None of them are particularly deep, incisive writing, but I was amused.
Estee's crossover is rather better, and gives Cerea a lot more depth than the series ever did.
I also watched A Centaur's Life for comparison, but found it to be a very different beast.
It presents itself as a cheerful little slice of life, but has some strangely dark undertones to do with prejudice and the nature of equality. The show veers between those different tones: one episode it has an extended, brutal sequence in Auschwitz; the next it has little kids learning how to get dressed with a tail. I'm not sure exactly what point it was trying to make, so I guess at least it wasn't overtly preachy?
The spider-girls are, I think, a gesture towards Jorogumo, which are a traditional mainstay of Japanese monster lore.
Monster Musume no Iru Nichijou -- aka Everyday Life with Monstergirls -- is one of my favorites, just for the sheer insanity of it. Not a big fan of harem anime in general; but I like that this one subverts or plays with a lot of the usual tropes. I actually read the manga long before the anime was released; and have been reading Okayado's stuff for a very long time. If you can dig it up, his early monster girl stuff, "Life with a (insert monstergirl here)" is cute, but also hentai. It's early work, so the art isn't nearly as good either. The manga is even more fanservice-y than the show; but nothing explicitly sexual. Last I checked he's still producing more of it; but IMO the quality has gone way down, and it's getting kind of repetitive and stupid overall. There are still some good threads, but not enough to bother with. The anime only covers the first half-dozen or so volumes of the manga, and it's up to over fifty now. The anime is pretty faithful to the manga, not too many changes.
I started reading Musume no Oisha-san -- aka Monster Girl Doctor -- but haven't gotten beyond the first few pages yet, still waiting for the rest to show up on my favorite fan translation site. I've seen the anime trailer, but that's about it.
Read the first volume of Centaur no Nyami -- aka A Centaur's Life -- and really should get back to it. It had interesting characters. I haven't see the anime yet; but it's on my list.
I haven't seen Demi-chan wa Kataritai -- aka Interviews with Monstergirls but I may look it up.
If you haven't seen it, I'd also recommend reading Hitomi-sensei no Hokenshitsu -- aka Nurse Hitomi's Monster Infirmary; about a school nurse in a school for monstergirls/monsterguys. No anime yet, just the manga. A bit of mild ecchi fanservice, but not much. It's a very character-driven, slice-of-life series.
Every time I watch anime, things get a little weirder. These two are great and entertaining, as well as the offshoots.
They all derive from a meme chain that starts with a few short comics about a guy trying to have a family life with a monster girl, and culminating in Monster Girl Encyclopedia which is basically the genre codifier. Since the concept itself can’t be properly copyrighted, it effectively became open source.
Yes, it grew out of porn and isn’t ashamed of it.
Speaking of which, recently I’ve been reading a lot of monster girl fiction for research purposes, and stumbled on this highly insightful observation regarding the whole thing which I feel compelled to share:
Hm; thanks for doing that and sharing your observations.
Harem animes were never "good" of course (no i did not watch tenchi muyo and im sure there's a few that are good that aren't just subversive), but I swear they've gotten objectively worse. I watched every day life and it was about what i expected for the first four or five episodes, but when it kept going it just kept adding more and more and more characters every episode without progressing at all. It's pretty clear that all anime studios are optimizing for merch, and rather make a bet and develop their characters, if they're going to do fan service at all, they're going to have 30 characters and hope one goes viral. I'm really thankful myanimelist has a recommendation section for their shows, its the only way i can pick up a good anime without being tricked by the cover.
Of those mentioned above, I've only seen Monster Girl Doctor.
I've never liked harems. I'm not sure if it's because I'm married, or if I just can't identify with the male lead. It's not wish fulfulment: I wouldn't wish to be that frigging dense.
That's where Monster Girl Doctor is different. Doctor Glen is quiet, reserved, knowledgeable, good at his job, and above all, professional. Unfortunately, that only serves as a contrast to highlight the ridiculous behavior of the girls. In any other harem, the protagonist is flustered and acting like a nitwit, so the girls obsessively clinging to him don't seem so unusual in comparison.
Doctor Glen is a good character - or at least, a good character by the standards of being the ML of a harem. That's why I hate to recommend that the show could be improved if he were deleted entirely. Monster Girl Doctor would have been better if Sapphee the lamia was the lead character. She's also a doctor - probably better qualified, honestly, based on her school rank and ability to restrain patients by herself. Maybe not having a distracting human male around would give her a chance to actually show it.
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In that case, I recommend Interviews with Monster Girls. It's the least haremy by far.
I did enjoy seeing Doctor Glen being professional and competent. It's a nice change from so many harems where the lead is just an ordinary boy with no charm or talent at all.
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I started calling this the Unnecessary Everyman Protagonist (UEP). If the show is about monster girls or whatever, then just give me that. I don't care about some guy. If the storytelling is good enough, there shouldn't need to be a character who only exists to react to things.