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(Aiya) The Dorm Room Cat-Girl: An Anime Inspired RomCom!
I have a Quirky Romantic-Comedy with 65k words called:
The Dorm Room Cat-Girl: An Anime Inspired Rom-Com
Aiya is a street cat on the verge of dying from a flu in an alley. Luckily, she is rescued by a cool boarding-school boy, but when her sickness gravely overwhelms her, she is given another chance at life as a human by a magical Cat-God that is slowly losing his love-powered magic. She must compete with the school-boy's crush: his American Child-Actress classmate and childhood friend, while also learning the complexities of being human in order to win the boy's love before the Cat-God's magic runs out in two weeks, or face death a second time.
It's a Romantic Comedy, with more comedy than romance, following a Blue-Haired Cat-Eared heroine who is trying to learn how to be human. The story takes place in a fictional Elite high school in northern Tokyo and explores various facets of Japanese language and culture. It has already undergone professional developmental and line edits.
About me: I graduated with a B.S. in Biology from the University at Albany, SUNY. While there, I was president of the UAlbany Japanese Student Association and was a live-in member of the East Asian Studies Living-Learning Community. My name is Carlitos J. Serrano; writing as C. S. James. I humbly wish to be traditionally published as well as produce an audiobook version. I've written this book with the intention of making it both marketable and accessible (easy to read), thereby increasing its chances at reaching mainstream success.
Sincerely,
Carlitos J. Serrano
Email: serranocarlitos@ymail.com
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Below is the 640-word synopsis:
In an alley outside of the prestigious Kasumi Academy, a dying street cat is rescued and given the name Aiya by Hiroshi Kato; with the help of her mouse assistant, Toshi. Aiya is cared for by Hiroshi for three days, but dies anyway on midnight Sunday. She is resurrected by a magical but weak Cat-God and transformed into a human, at the cost that she must collect “Love-Magic” by making Hiroshi fall in love with her within two weeks before the Cat-God’s magic runs out, or else she must die again.
Antics ensue when Hiroshi wakes up and sees her, but he’s determined to go to school anyway. He is met with the friendly Emiko Tachibana. Emiko tries to remind Hiroshi about her younger brother and his former friend, Ritsu, and asks if they can make up. Ritsu is a student as well, but there was a conflict between Hiroshi and Ritsu, that caused them to hate each other. Ritsu seemingly doesn’t go to school because of it.
When Hiroshi goes to class, a new transfer student arrives; his friend from childhood that moved to Hollywood in the U.S. 6 years ago to pursue a successful acting career. She instantly rekindles their friendship.
In the meantime, Aiya is studying how to be human by watching anime/cartoons on a streaming service in Hiroshi’s dorm. When soccer practice makes Hiroshi arrive back to his dorm late, he debates with Aiya, but ultimately lets her and Toshi stay in his dorm out of kindness.
Aiya convinces Hiroshi to bring her to school where she meets Emiko who then gives her an old uniform. She then meets Ritsu, a genius teen hermit, who tells her about the fight he had with Hiroshi involving how Murasaki was scouted to move to Hollywood. Ritsu hacks Aiya into Hiroshi’s class, gives her a smartphone, and discovers the GPS inside Toshi.
Aiya sits behind Hiroshi in class but immediately becomes rivals with Murasaki. Throughout the next weeks, she fights her bodyguard, tries to out-swimsuit-model her, plays a 4-hour long 1v1 volleyball game, and debates her in a public bath. Eventually, Murasaki convinces Hiroshi to take a private English lesson in his dorm. In order to keep the secret that Aiya lives there, Aiya agrees to sleepover at Emiko’s house on the condition that she and Hiroshi go out on a date on Saturday. Hiroshi feels bad about lying and invites Murasaki over again for Saturday to reveal the truth about Aiya.
On Saturday, the date goes well, but Hiroshi admits to loving Murasaki. In a desperate attempt, Aiya gets on top of Hiroshi at the same time Murasaki arrives at the dorm. Murasaki furiously takes off then a depressed Hiroshi asks Aiya to leave.
Aiya and Toshi go to Emiko’s house, Aiya writes a message to Hiroshi on her dying smartphone then leaves it. Aiya decides to fix the situation, asking Emiko for Murasaki’s address. Aiya then sneaks into Murasaki’s dorm room through her window and tells her the truth. The next day, Hiroshi goes to Murasaki’s and Murasaki respects Hiroshi’s kindness. The two then try to find Aiya at Emiko’s house, but when Hiroshi reads the message on the phone she left, he realizes that Aiya is about to die. The trio go out to find Aiya, but are unsuccessful. Murasaki convinces Hiroshi to make up with Ritsu, then Ritsu tracks the GPS mouse to the alley where Hiroshi and Aiya first met.
Aiya comforts Toshi as she is lifted into the sky by the Cat-God who tells her that all her friends loved her all along, fulfilling her Love-Magic requirement. She is sent back to Earth and all 6 characters share a tender hugging moment. Weeks pass and the story ends with Aiya living in Murasaki’s dorm, and going to the beach where they see Hiroshi and Ritsu, having fun together.
I’m really enjoying this story. You have all the elements of a classic Disney animated movie. The Heroine, The pet companion, A Time Limit , A prince/male character to fall in love with. My choice of comparison would be the little Mermaid due to Aiya’s inability to walk when she first gets her human legs.
I’ve gotten as far as Aiya trying to use the TV. All the characters so far are very enjoyable. I’m invested with how this story turns out for the protagonist. Looking forward to seeing how the rest of this plays out.
I’m very happy you enjoy it!! However, I found that this page is very easily accessible via search engine, so I need to delete the full manuscript. I do hope you downloaded the document! If not, let me know and I’ll send it to you personally 🙂
I got up to chapter chapter 16. I purchase quite a number of light novels from Amazon and if you did go to sell there, I’d buy it. You got a really good story going on for its genre.
Such as the nature of light novels, the reader is expected to discard quite a bit of realist notions when going into a fantasy novel. This might just be nitpicking. When the cat becomes a human, her ability to adapt to general concepts of behavior and interacting with the world as a human occurs far too quickly. She understands too much for a cat. I would recommend a acclimatization period between feline behaviors and resolving to being a human. You have the option of creating quite the humorous situations such as a cat feather teaser toy event or knocking things off the counter for no other reason. Then her cat mindset and human brain realize its no longer entertaining? How about a night on the town and all the shenanigans that may follow?
Its either that or make the cat entity give Aiya infused amounts of cultural understanding. That would clear up what I saw as a glaring issue in the shortest amount as possible. The watching anime just isn’t sufficient education and is a bit of a cop out. Some cats know how to open a door, they just struggle with it. Maybe have her struggle with the new knowledge and watch anime to clear up/make more misunderstandings?
Also, despite Aiya being the protagonist the story is following, I’m not entirely sold for wanting her to come out victorious. Aiya’s success means the failure of quite the endearing childhood friend to the male lead character. I only reached chapter 16 but I recommend some sort of bonding event to get the main characters more involved and to ween the reader’s heart towards Aiya’s success. Maybe a random pet behind the ears? Something so Aiya is not still behind the starting line when the competition begins. And why is there no purring anywhere?
Anyway, that is it for my review. The story reasonably sellable as is.
The book currently available on Amazon, and I’m very happy to say that despite basically no promotion, it’s selling quite well; ranking between 30k and 110k organically. I very much appreciate your assessment of the protagonist! It does bring to light that Aiya is supposed to have more scenes where she’s clumsier and out-of-touch, but I had to trust that the reader would come up with a reason why she’s not totally socially inept. The practical answer is that she’d risk being annoying and unrelatable as the majority viewpoint character. I’m glad that you don’t see it that way, it does open up more possibilities for a range of character traits in future works.
If I were to take a crack at it, Ritsu mentioned that her brain had enhanced plasticity to compensate for the fact that she’s a young cat in a 16 year old human body; she’s learning inhumanly fast to begin with. She consumed hours upon hours of television at high speeds in this “brain retraining” state and therefore picked up quite a few cultural norms as well as how to read by the time she woke up the next morning. However, it could also be said that she already knew quite a few things from her life as a cat, or that the cat-god gave her these abilities innately.
Aiya is fighting an uphill battle, so the tender moments she does get to have with Hiroshi in later chapters had to be earned. I’m very happy you mentioned this; you’ve lightly struck on a big theme of this story! Is Murasaki really that bad? Does this story even have a villain?
There’s tons of purring in the upcoming audiobook! My thinking was that the cat puns, meows, and purrs, would land far better if they were used scarcely. The actress that voices Aiya on the other hand? Oh, she goes all out
Overall, I’m glad you took the time to read through 16 chapters; this is a rather long (but entertaining!) story, comparatively speaking. I now have more of an idea of what LN readers look for when they read OELNs, so my upcoming project will be able to most definitely utilize your advice. Thanks a lot, Justice!
Its my preference to purchase your story on Amazon in support of a fellow author. I really do enjoy this genre of storytelling. Through purchase and leaving a positive review at a later date, my merger support will hopefully make additional content in the future at little easier to come by. Good luck and congratulations.