This was mentioned to me as a series to watch by a Japanese colleague acclaimed for his technical capability. What can I say... It's furries in 3D.

The "3D" in Kemono Friends is interesting enough. It's not a straight-up 3D where you create a model with physics and kinematics and drop it into Blender. It's not like Shrek. Instead, it's sort of a 3D, but mapped onto screen with anime-specific changes, such as added confining lines. The model itself makes anime concessions too. For example, the mouth is always on the side.

In part, the 3D is noticeable because production quality is rather poor. The aforementioned confining lines are inconsistent. Water is made to splash off-screen. And so on. If it were a big-budget no-excuses 3D, it could be easier to accept.

The less said about the remainder of production, the better. Okay, it's a BAMF. With little girls, of course, because duh anime. The only character other than protagonist in ep.1 is dumb like a sack of bricks — presumably because she's an animal. Well, a furry, really.

Overall, terrible. But possibly cannot-look-away terrible.

P.S. You know, if little furry girl anime like this becomes a genre, like the idol anime, I predict that we'll see a grizzly twist anime, possibly directed by Yukihiro Miyamoto, based on Island of Dr. Moreau. I give it 2 years.

UPDATE: Omo is trying to stay open-minded. A great deal of existential questioning can be done with junk animation, etc.

UPDATE: Evirus used simpler words. According to him, the series has "the right amount of care in the storytelling, setting, and characters to hold the viewer's interest as the tales unfold" despite "crudely animated 3DCG". Therefore,

Kemono Friends is captivating as a road trip story with canned adventures which I'm sure will culminate in a grand set of lessons learned along the way. It's successful enough at it that I don't care about the 3DCG aspects at all.

I can sympathise with him, but the grand adventure was much too simple thus far.

Omo, by the way, reposited and tried his hardest to be concise, after all.

There is a category of literature in which the concept of finding yourself is the central gist. I think of Kemono Friends as a Greek epic, in which this post-apocalyptic society builds around the person who asks, “who am I”?

Thanks for the focus, Captain Obvious. The genre was defined when Bag-chan found that she didn't even remember own name. It's the dumbed down approach that raises my shackles about Kemono Friends, not its timeless messages.

UPDATE: "A very special message from Ozaki Yuka, the voice of Serval in Kemono Friends".