It kind of ended up like Bokuben’s anime.
Personally don’t believe that the series requires a full-on overview so I’ll keep things short and simple about it. Although, I think the statement is enough to explain things.
Murenase is set on a bizarro world where humans are more or less extinct and Mazama Jin is one of them in a school filled with animals. We won’t question why the guys are basically animals with uniforms on and why girls are human girls with animal ears and tails but Jin is an incredible disdain towards animals after a bad childhood experience and loathes his environment. Jin tries to romance fellow human and female, Hino Hitomi and joins her cooking club while he also gets roped into an unwanted relationship with the Okami Ranka, a tiny wolf girl who establishes herself as head of their pack. From there we get more members joining the cooking club and subsequently, Ranka’s pack. While the cooking part does lend itself to some arcs, the important takeaway is that Ranka’s pack, unlike every other group in the school, is comprised of members of different species.
Jin as a protagonist was entertaining solely for the fact that he was a tsundere who outwardly showed some emotion that wasn’t your basic “i need to protect everyone’s smiles” attitude that most MCs of his kind are. His primary goal is to get with Hitomi and I can respect that straightforward and unapologetic attitude he has in trying to achieve it. He doubles as the narrator who imparts interesting animal facts along with the actual narrator. He isn’t afraid to speak his animosity towards others but means well enough in the end which works better for males and not particular love interests in other series. Hitomi herself doesn’t really do much aside from look pretty and be the “good” straight-man in the comedic portions while Jin mostly plays up being the asshole.
Ranka’s voice is the entire reason I picked the series up to begin with. I caught a glimpse of the series’ manga years ago from a friend but even when the anime started airing properly, it wouldn’t be around til episode 9 I happened upon a clip of Ranka and her enthusiastic voice and the rest is history. I appreciate her general demeanor and idiocy because she’s so sincere and simple-minded that it’s hard to really blame her for anything. The first new member of the pack is the Komori Yukari, the koala who becomes rather irrelevant quickly after her shtick is revealed to be a literal shit-eater. Shishio Miyubi is the sloth who dies trying to do anything but she gets a good amount of development so far as the series go due to her basically struggling to live doing simple tasks and persevering through it all.
Nekomai Kurumi doesn’t really do much aside from her first appearance and Meimei is the next girl with Miyubi who goes through a period of development, mostly from a spoiled celebrity into an awakened masochist. There’s an entire bevy of side-characters who are around to distribute appropriate wildlife facts so I’m not going to try and really and go through them. If anything, I don’t really care for the hyena, Ranka’s siter and lackeys are a bit fun with Kuromori, and because of fetishes, I enjoyed the dolphin and beluga whales. The series is clearly not meant to convey too much of a story than they are trying to have some fun educating people about animals with some pretty girls and some wilderness themed comedy going on with some honestly interesting facts because when was the last time you turned on the BBC or Animal Planet?
Going back to the start of this overview however, the anime did cut out a chunk of its adapted chapters and change the order of how things went. Hitomi and Jin joining Ranka’s pack, especially the former, was mostly on accident and some of the smaller chapters were skipped over. The order of how events played out regarding Field Day and festival move up a couple chapters ahead in favor of introducing more characters in the anime. The ending also is a mish-mash of the cut Kangaroo boxing arc and the school festival arc which didn’t really do anything for me since I never tend to like anime original action finales. The anime does it’s job to a point where it made me read the manga but it does not exceed that purpose. Some of the attempts Jin makes to grow closer to Hitomi is cut out in the 57 chapter adaptation. In short, go read the manga for a full experience but it may not be entirely be needed if you were just looking for a comedy instead of a romcom with an ending in sight like Bokuben was.
Lair of the Idle 