Before the manga can continue the escapades of Riko Kozakura and her cat Musubi, Riko has a massive problem to resolve. At the end of volume 1, she ended up creating a side Tweeter to post pics of her cat online. This normally wouldn’t be a problem except she was careless: one of her co-workers saw company documents in one of her cat pictures, which led said co-worker to conclude it was someone within the company manning the Tweeter. In volume 2, more evidence began to pile up that concluded it was someone within two departments, and one of them is where Riko works at! I insinuated then that this might be how she ends up bringing a new cat lover into the fold.
…But you won’t believe how our sleuth detective ended up sleuthing her way out of catching Riko in the act!
You know, sometimes humans can be overthinkers. We find ourselves guessing correctly and making sure things are right, and then suddenly we find ourselves second guessing. In this case, the co-worker had enough of a trail to certainly put the pressure on Riko…but she got caught assuming. Naming the cat after food is a sign! Oh the place in the photos is a mess! And oh look at the games everywhere! It’s definitely not Riko, a.k.a. woman who leaves work on time to game! Nuh-uh!
…Co-worker also assumed it was a dude, but for a small defense, no one in the office actually believes Riko is a gamer. Still though, how do you come so close only to then get so far away!? I’m sure Conan would be flabbergasted at the shoddy detective work! But with that scare over with, Riko decides she’s gonna close the account. Well, she then sees Musubi inside a convenience store bag, finds it cute, and takes a picture…
Cat + Gamer after that continues the general ins and outs of cat caring while also gaming with said cat. In volume 2, after many encounters, we finally get the shopkeeper’s name, Obayashi, so Riko will attempt to remember it (not), and we get more lessons on how to take care of a cat, ranging from the brushes to buy to buying a cat tower so Musubi can stop causing so much damage in the apartment. We also meet Riko’s sister, Mai, who apparently is just like every other youth in loving social media and getting likes, which is why she updates her Instastar every day. Riko can’t deal with the contrast in Mai’s sterling social media pictures and seeing how she looks in reality.
While the cat escapades were fun, and it technically still continued throughout all these scenarios in some form or fashion, it was a nice chance of pace to add new characters into the manga. We got to see Mai learn that sometimes it’s not always about getting likes, and also the cat just loves being a menace when someone’s gaming. We also see how Riko reacts to the cat leveling up, as it went from doing some normal things to now jumping on shelves and knocking things over.
The art was at some points a bit off, but the manga isn’t necessarily intended to be dynamic — it just needs to be funny and sometimes relatable. If you stick enough gaming and nerd moments with a woman who leaves work on time, that’ll be good enough. And throw in this cat who just does what it wants, you get a pretty good read about one person learning that raising cats is tough!