It sells you a fluffy pink cafe cartoon and then quietly hands you an alien invasion, a doomed love triangle, and one of the meanest identity twists in magical girl history. Ichigo spends half the series trying to keep her tail from popping out around Masaya while Kish keeps showing up to flirt mid-battle like a menace, and somehow that dynamic ages better than the monster of the week it's wrapped in. The Red Data animal gimmick actually means something: Lettuce is a finless porpoise, Zakuro a gray wolf, Pudding a golden lion tamarin, and the endangered species angle isn't decoration, it's the whole thesis. Yes, the early episodes run the same Chimera Anima loop until you can set your watch by it. Push through, because the Deep Blue reveal reframes every soft scene that came before it. Waitress uniforms and genocide plots, and it commits to both.

On a date with her crush, Masaya Aoyama, Ichigo Momomiya is hit by a strange ray that mixes her DNA with that of the endangered Iriomote wildcat. Soon she is craving fish, occasionally showing cat ears and a tail, and learning she can become Mew Ichigo, a pink-haired magical heroine. Two researchers, Ryou Shirogane and Keiichiro Akasaka, reveal they gave her the cat genes on purpose to create a defender against invading aliens. Four other girls carry the genes of different endangered animals as part of the secret Mew Project, which aims to guard Earth from an alien menace known as Deep Blue. Finding the job too big to handle alone, Ichigo must track them down before the aliens seize the planet. The result is a magical girl story blending adventure, comedy, romance and sci-fi.