Anime Neko-chan

Anime Neko-chan (Japanese: あにめねこちゃん [aɲime nekotɕaɴ]) is a 1988 weekly anime series based on COMPOD's Neko-chan video game series. It first aired on November 19, 1988 on Osatere, and gained popularity, more than that of the Neko-chan games, spanning different language dubs, most of which aired in European territories.

The series involves a Japanese Bobtail cat named Neko-chan. She is a cat who acts like a human, but still does cat things, such as eating cat food and licking her paws, alongside hunting mice and birds. Said cat also has a family, mainly involving Mama Neko (her mother), Papa Neko (her dad), and Nekkun (her older brother).

Anime Neko-chan became very popular in Japan, Italy, Taiwan, and Chile, alongside being semi-popular in France. As was the case for Chile, various internet memes in the Spanish language often refer to the main character as Gatínhabla (the name of its Latin American Spanish dub, produced in that country), but also use Gatín for puns (such as "Gatín cazador").

In 2008, to celebrate Neko-chan's 20th anniversary, the series was redubbed, and was available through C.O.V.I.D. Japan's website via the Neko-dubs section, available in several languages.

Episodes
Anime Neko-chan is an anime long-runner airing for over 30 years and having no final episodes, with the anime still airing up to this day.

A new episode appears per Saturday; reruns air on other weeks, such as a already-ran episode airing on Mondays.

Characters
Anime Neko-chan contains a huge cast of characters, including those from the Neko-chan games. There were also unique characters never seen in the games, though some of them appeared in future Neko-chan games (mostly spin-offs).

Opening themes
Anime Neko-chan featured several opening themes, which changed in some occasions. Most of these songs are performed by Eiko Toshiko, Neko-chan's voice actress.

Trivia

 * As per Neko-chan standards, every text written in Hiragana so that even pre-schoolers could read the text. This also applies to text that were originally in katana and lines were replaced with either the corresponding vowel or another vowel that represents the original word (e.g. パワーロード becomes ぱわあろうど). This also applies to the title, in which the word "anime" is written as あにめ, rather than アニメ as expected.
 * This is the most popular piece of Neko-chan media in history.