I've never read any of Yuji Iwahara's work before Cat Paradise, but I'd heard nothing but good things. While his past stories seemed to be a bit dark, this is straight up action/adventure fun.
Yumi is a new student at Matabi Academy, and like many other students, her main reason for going to this school is that they allow cats on campus. We soon find out that a demon cat is sealed somewhere on the school grounds, and that the student council and their cats watch over it. Yumi and her cat, Kansuke, soon encounter a demon and gain their own power similar to the student council members'.
There's well tread ground here, but Iwahara obviously knows it. In the author's comment section, he says he was aiming for creating something that felt like an anime, and I'd say he hit his mark. Ancient sealed demons, students fighting monsters, a mysterious student council, seven "chosen" kids, etc.; it's all fairly common for anime. The twist in this scenario is the fixation on cats. Each student/cat pair has a unique power based on some aspect of their personality (Yumi creates costumes for Kansuke which turn him into a humanoid cat person). Their powers also allow them to communicate with cats. There are plenty of pet owners who dress up their pets, and Yumi is no expection, so when Kansuke finally gets to talk with her, it's funny to finally see an animal get to complain about being forced to wear clothes. In addition to Yumi, we get to see one other student council member's power in this volume.
There's a kind of silliness to the story's underlying premise, but that's what makes it fun. The other thing that make this series worth reading is the art. His art actually reminds of Eiichiro Oda's (One Piece), not in his character designs (they're nothing alike), but in the thickness of the linework, and the way that he uses parallel lines for shading instead of screentoning. Except in Iwahara's case the shading sometimes stands out a bit too much, and can look a little weird. Here ,for instance, Yumi's tongue and neck just seem a bit odd (click to enlarge):
Otherwise, I really like his style. I'm no cat expert, but it seems Iwahara put in the effort to make the cat's breeds all look distinct and like real cats...or as real as is art style would allow. There's also a touch of Disney to the way he draws the cats, but maybe that's just me. I loved this small little gag where they're in a library and Kansuke has the sudden urge to scratch a book for no other reason than the fact that he's a cat. The way he looks at Yumi as he's about to do it is just cute. It's something a real cat would do:
This manga is fun in the way something like Digimon is. You know it's silly, but you can't help but get wrapped up in it. Your mileage may vary, but I'm looking forward to more. And if you want your shonen fix, at 5 volumes, this is a good alternative to other, more epically-sized series.
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