I am doing this review differently from the others. I am going to leave the TL;DR first: the cat dies in the last episode.

I didn't like this drama, but the cat dying wasn't the sole reason for that (I just felt betrayed because I usually drop a series when a cat dies) but this drama is bad as a whole. So I am going to enumerate the points which I disliked instead of a general review.

The premise: Hyun Jong Hyun (the male lead) is an aspiring webtoon writer that struggles to get a debut and works part-time at a bookstore to pay his bills. He lives in a studio apartment with his 10-year-old female cat, Bokgil, that he found one rainy night on the streets. One day, he met by accident Cho Hye Jung (the female lead), who also lives in his neighborhood. She is also looking for her missing cat, Haru, who her stupid family member lost when she was sick in a hospital (and yeah, Haru is Bokgil, as if it wasn't obvious from the start lol).

The cat: I don't say this a lot, but the cat actor is really ugly (sorry, not sorry), he has an expensive luxury cat face which I think is ugly because it doesn't look even like a cat's face at all. Why do people breed cats to look like this? Also, and I don't even want to debate about the respiratory problems, excessive rheum and inability to groom their own fur. Then, the actor also looks like he is an old cat, but I couldn't find any information online about him.

The part that bothers me is that it looks like they were abusing the cat in many scenes. I don't remember everything now, but in the last episodes there was a part where the ml was giving Bokgil a pill and, instead of pretending to give the cat a pill the guy just SHOVED something the cats throats, wtf, he also squeezed the cat too many times and once even threw it in the air (??). Even in the fiction, the cat, Bokgil, is abused because her owner neglects her a lot. We can hear her thoughts and most of the time she is begging for food or for attention, while her owner is always busy (example: he goes out to drink with his friend, comes back drunk and forgets to feed her) and he says that he loves her (??).

Also, we learned that the fl feeds stray cats, but after feeding them a wretch of a neighbor that hates cats and says that cats keep "ruining his garbage" and "meowing that he can't sleep" punishes her. He even hit the fl with a broom in an episode while the ml protects her. Later, the kitten is found dead (probably poisoned by the stupid neighbor guy), but my point is why even add this scene in the drama at all? And the worse part is that the neighbor was never punished for his evil acts.

Story & characters: The story is bad and the characters are annoying and unlikable. I saw on Mydramalist people complaining that the fl was annoying, but for me, the ml was way more annoying and stupid. I think that the worse part is that someone said that the ml actor only agreed to take part in this series because he liked cats, wth. I think that there are a lot of fans of Korean actors there, so their opinion may be biased.

My two favourite stupid moments in the story are when Bokgil was sick. Her owner grabbed her with his hands and just started running out of his house to the vet. He didn't even use a pet carrier or anything. Then in the next scene, we saw that the Veterinary Hospital is just a 5-minute walk of the ml's house (lol). Then, there wasn't a receptionist or other patients at the hospital's reception, instead there was a veterinarian that examined the cat at the reception's desk. The hospital appeared in other scenes and was always empty except for the veterinarian which made me think that drama's producers didn't have enough money to hire extras lol.

My second favourite part was when the cat went missing and both fl and ml started searching in the neighborhood until ml slipped in the most dumb way hurting his wrist in the process. He also temporarily lost his motor coordination in that hand, making him unable to draw properly for a few days, until one day he started using his hand again out of the blue lol

The music: The OST is just generic kpop that you would expect in a kdrama, nothing special (but since I generally dislike kpop it's also a bad point for me).

Overall, this series doesn't have anything good to please people who like cats (I forgot to mention, but since the cat "talks" she never meows at all). I can't think of a good reason to watch it, and I still don't know why a lot of people gave such a big score for this series on Mydramalist. So it's better to avoid it at all costs. Not recommended.

Neko Zamurai is a series of dramas about an unemployed Samurai looking for a job in Edo, Madarame Kyuutaro and a female white cat, Tamanojo or Tama-chan (who is actually portrayed by two different cats, Anago and Sakura).

The story is a bit different in each season and in the movies. In the 1st season, Kyuutaro is an unemployed samurai living alone in Edo, even though he has a wife and a kid, and is trying to find a job as a samurai at the local daimyo house and he doesn't know how to do anything else for a living so he is almost living in poverty. One day, one clerk of a random shop offers him reward money if he kills the pet cat of his boss, which is supposedly a cat demon (bake neko) that charmed his boss. Kyuutaro accepts the job because of the hefty sum of money but, of course, he didn't kill the cat and took her into his care instead; he gave a jar with supposedly the bake neko spirit sealed inside to the clerk guy, that he wasn't supposed to open so he wouldn't release his spirit and got the money. Then, every episode is about Kyuutaro taking care of Tama-chan and how she remembers his family, while he tries to earn money in odd jobs and doesn't give up on getting the samurai job lol.

In the 2nd season Kyuutaro and Tama-chan are still living in Edo together, but each episode is kind of standalone and unrelated to the others, which is a kind of letdown compared to the 1st season and to the ending but I can't explain more about it without spoiling it.

In the 1st movie, also named Neko Zamurai, the story is a retelling of the 1st season with the difference that Kyuutaro was asked by the people of the dog clan to kill the cat of the cat clan (Tama-chan) because she was engaged to the cat of the daimyo/emperor (I can't remember which). Then, again, he didn't kill Tama-chan but faked killing her and burying her in his backyard, while he took care of her. I thought that this movie is a bit weird because the cat clan which was supposed to be a clan that loved cats, didn't like Tama-chan at all and even kept her locked in a room and had a servant, who actually cared about the cat, take care of her. And they're also jerks because they treat the cat caretaker badly and they didn't care about the cat well-being at all when she disappeared; they even tried to replace her with another cat so they would fool their clan leader. While the dog clan actually liked their dog and would take him for walks every day.

In the 2nd movie, Neko Samurai 2: A Tropical Adventure, which is a sequel to the tv series, Kyuutaro is still living in Edo with Tamanojo and trying to land a job, but this time his mother-in-law starts living with him and she finds him a job on another island. Then he goes there with the cats but on the voyage they end up stranded in a random tropical island. There, the people believe that a white cat is a god and a black cat is a devil (they have a black cat outside their village, living in a tent for unexplained reasons), so they start worshipping Tamanojo and lock Kyuutaro in jail. In my opinion this movie is so bad that I regret watching it and the only good thing in this is the ending song.

The 3rd movie, Neko Zamurai: Tamanojo, Edo e Iku, is a prequel of the tv series and it shows how Tamanojo was before going to Edo and ended up being the cat of the shop owner. The story started with Tamanojo as a tiny kitty that was, probably, abandoned in a tent in the woods. There she had an encounter with a random guy that was fighting in a civil war or something but he died after leaving her covered in blood (I honestly didn't get this part of the story lol), then she was found by another guy who adopted her. Tamanojo kept switching owners until she ended up the cat of a courier, who is the male lead in this movie instead of Kyuutaro and he got to be known as the cat courier (as opposed to the cat samurai in the original). I think that this movie is okay, a bit worse than the 1st movie but way better than the second.

The OST of the series is alright, nothing too special except the opening and the random song that Kyuutaro sings; the acting is exceptional on the cats part of course. I may be biased because Sakura-chan behaves like a cat of mine and Anago-kun (I think that he's male) looks like a white cat of mine that passed away, but other cats that appeared in the series are great too. About the human actors, they're alright and the Kyuutaro character was pretty funny most of the time (except in the 2nd movie).

This series is too lengthy for me to give a detailed review but I hope I got my point across. My recommendation to each series is: 1st season definitely; 2nd season and 1st movie not as funny as the 1st season, but I recommend; 2nd and 3rd movies I won't recommend it, 3rd movie maybe if you're curious but the 2nd movie I won't recommend it at all.