In January, Season 2 of Frieren will be released. Those who still can’t get enough of relaxed slice-of-life series after watching it might have found a suitable successor with the upcoming anime – at least if they like cats.
What is this new anime? The anime titled “The Cat and the Dragon” is based on the light novel of the same name. The original work has been rated 8.73 out of 10 stars on the manga review site MangaDex with over 1,500 votes – which shows how good the anime could be.
The anime is about a small dragon that is raised by a cat and treated like her own kitten. Over time, the little baby dragon grows into a large, fire-breathing creature that is not very fond of humans.
However, the dragon loves its furry companions in the forest above all else. It watches over many curious cats but must learn to deal properly with humans. Some of the cats that the dragon looks after travel with humans or live in populated cities.
Anime fans confuse the series with a mixed genre
When is the anime coming out? As Crunchyroll recently announced, the anime will be released in July 2026, right in the summer season. This makes its debut a season later than Frieren, the best anime of all time, and it could fill the gap in the hearts of fans who enjoy slice-of-life animes.
Because the trailer already conveys that the series is rather cozy. Like Frieren, the dragon must also learn to develop an interest in humans and accept them. Many fans mistakenly categorized the anime into a different genre.
What else could it have been? In the Reddit forum, a user questions whether the anime would be about a dragon being reincarnated as a cat. He mistakenly classified the anime in the isekai genre because the first images look like that. Here is a hybrid creature of cat and dragon.
In isekai, characters are reborn in another world as a new being or different person. The genre has seen a huge boom over the past few years, which has led to an overflow of series in this area – often with fluctuating quality. This is too much for some fans, as they write on Reddit.
But The Cat and the Dragon is more in the slice-of-life direction; no one gets reincarnated as a dragon here. And there is no such long name that reveals the entire story in the title.
There are some animes in the isekai genre that fans should definitely see. You can read about which reincarnations you shouldn’t miss in the following article on MeinMMO: The 5 best isekai animes that every fan should see
