Animal Panic (あにまる☆ぱにっく) Review

Animal Panic (あにまる☆ぱにっく) is a weird game…

First off, the premise is weird. It comes from QUINCE SOFT, a Lump of Sugar sub-brand I’d just been praising for Mono no Aware wa Iro no Koro.. I figured it was Lump of Sugar’s experimental plot, a place for oddball new games with strange setups. A year and change later, I got slapped in the face.

Animal Panic looks like the most generic moege imaginable, and the staff list gives zero reason to expect surprises.

Then, even weirder: I actually played the damn thing for some reason, and found it contains stuff way stranger than I expected.

The art is by the Miyasaka sisters, whose reputation is damn near toxic at this point. Every game they touch is either bland as tap water or an outright landmine; the only one worth a look is probably Izayoi no Fortuna from back in the day. Production-wise this game looks flat broke, but boot it up and nope—not broke at all.

Every girl’s mouth animates when she talks, the OP actually lip-syncs the heroines, and as if that weren’t enough, this being a “magical girl” game, the transformations are fully animated!

Holy shit, this is a Lump of Sugar sub-brand game. Lump of Sugar itself cut the beast-ear animation from its own titles!

What confuses me most is that the budget went to the weirdest places. Slick transformation effects, decent art, a hefty file size, a lavish OP—and yet the story is so thin it’s incomprehensible.

Right, I mentioned this is a “magical girl” game. The actual setup is so simple I don’t even know what to say.

The protagonist and his non-blood-related little sister run into a tiny pink rabbit and a black cat. The animals say some “fragments” from their kingdom have fallen into the human world and need collecting.

So they contract with various girls, make them magical girls, and collect the fragments. Supposedly once it’s all done, any wish can be granted.

Oh God, it’s so cliché I’m speechless.

The plot unfolds just as predictably. The protagonist’s sister transforms into a magical girl, and his classmates—especially the girls he knows—are all magical girls too…

He also notices a classmate named Minazuki Ruon. She barely talks to anyone but takes a keen interest in what he’s doing. Eventually he finds out she’s a magical girl too—except she contracted with the black cat, not the pink rabbit on his side.

In theory the black cat is the evil faction and the pink rabbit the ally of justice, so they’d fight eventually, right?

Wrong! They bicker a bit and make peace. Then the game throws a curveball!

During a fight, the protagonist somehow resonates with a “wish fragment” and turns into a magical girl himself!

And his magical girl form wields a baseball bat, knows zero magic, and just beats the crap out of people. Simple and effective!

Also, his magical girl form is outrageously slutty—thirstier than any heroine!

He even gets a period after transforming, all sorts of unhinged shit. And the feminized protagonist gets reverse-rapped by a heroine!

As the story gets more and more yuri, the writer seemingly eats something weird and slams the brakes. It reverts to normal and switches to heroine routes. Minazuki Ruon says her IQ is so high and her skills so insane she’s basically invincible, so she wants to drop out. The protagonist successfully romances her, giving her life purpose and showing her what her magical girl “wish” is.

He asks why she became a magical girl—his sister did it to confess to her brother, for instance—so what made this genius sign a contract?

“Because I was bored.”

Geniuses are built different. Goated. Absolutely goated.

The finale is predictably cliché: the protagonist gives this “genius” a reason to keep living. I can’t help feeling he just used “romance” to ruin a proud loner.

Animal Panic has almost no merits, but you can scrape together two highlights. One: the Miyasaka sisters’ art and fully animated transformations. Two: the “protagonist turns into a magical girl” setup. Obviously that’s not enough to save the game. Maybe it just wanted to sell first-week copies and bail, but either way, blowing so much budget on transformation animation is a waste, because the common route is borderline unwatchable. At first I blamed the writer, but no—the real issue is the voice acting. Stiff line readings, every heroine flavorless. I’d rather they skimp on transformation effects and hire some B-list VAs. I don’t know if Ishihara Mai is too busy or Akino Hana went home to have a baby, but even Hanazawa Sakura would’ve been an improvement…

Honestly, if you’ve got spare cash, why not give it to Lump of Sugar proper? Why waste it like this?

And yeah, the common route is boring and the setup cliché, but at least you’ve got the protagonist’s magical girl form, “Magical Girl Mako,” to ogle! Could we get more close-ups of the thirsty protagonist? Maybe he’s the game’s only shot at salvation.