A Centaur's Life

セントールの悩み (Centaur no Nayami)

6.4(42,175)

MAL Score

Ranked #8413

Popularity #2397

Fantasy
Slice of Life
School
Urban Fantasy

Episodes: 12
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Jul 9, 2017 to Sep 24, 2017
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Himeno is a gentle, reserved centaur girl growing up in a world where being supernatural is simply everyday life. At school, she’s surrounded by classmates whose bodies sport all kinds of unusual traits—horns, wings, tails, halos, and more—making the extraordinary feel completely ordinary.

Alongside her close friends Nozomi and Kyouko, Himeno settles into a cheerful routine of classes and friendship, finding plenty of small joys in a school life that’s mostly normal, just with a fantastical twist.

Otaku Consensus

A Centaur's Life lands best when Naoyuki Konno's direction and Touko Machida's episodic structure treat monster-girl anatomy as a social system rather than a punchline, giving its school and family vignettes a stranger aftertaste than the soft presentation suggests. Critics and viewers generally found it pleasant, light, and worth sampling, but the recurring complaint is that Haoliners Animation's restrained movement and the show's mild pacing leave it feeling less competitive than sharper slice-of-life peers.

Why You Should Watch

Watch A Centaur's Life if you want cute-girls school comfort with unusually nerdy urban-fantasy infrastructure underneath it. It scratches part of the same itch as a gentler monster-girl series, but trades harem escalation for classroom etiquette, family routines, body-design logistics, and flashes of political worldbuilding that explain why this society feels orderly rather than magical. The appeal is not big comedy or plot momentum; it is the odd contrast between soft slice-of-life rhythms and a setting tagged by viewers for politics and dystopian undertones. If you like the calm cadence of everyday anime but want more speculative texture than “clubroom and snacks,” this 12-episode 2017 series is a compact curiosity.

Key Characters

H
Himeno
Himeno works because her gentle reserve makes the setting's elaborate physical differences feel socially ordinary instead of performative.
N
Nozomi
Nozomi is one of the key classmates who keeps the series from becoming purely observational, giving Himeno's quieter presence a more active social counterweight.
K
Kyouko
Kyouko rounds out the central friend group with the kind of steady school-life chemistry that the anime relies on more than dramatic conflict.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
The series is built around a rare tonal split: AniList users tag it not only as Cute Girls Doing Cute Things and School, but also as Politics and Dystopian, reflecting how its soft vignettes sit inside a more regulated fantasy society.
2
Haoliners Animation's production is often described as decent but visually restrained; reviews specifically note that even scenes involving centaurs running or mermaids swimming can feel less kinetic than the designs invite.
3
Touko Machida's series composition favors short slice-of-life situations such as school activities and family interactions rather than a conventional fantasy quest structure, which is central to why the show feels more anthropological than adventure-driven.
4
The creature-design spread is broader than the title implies: the tag profile includes Monster Girl, Centaur, Kemonomimi, Nekomimi, Twins, Family Life, and Archery, making the show's everyday setting a catalogue of body types and social customs.
5
Its reception profile is modest but stable: a 6.42 MAL score from over 42,000 votes and a 61/100 AniList score place it firmly in cult-curiosity territory rather than mainstream slice-of-life consensus favorite.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: A Centaur's Life aired as a 12-episode summer 2017 TV anime from July 9 to September 24, giving it the compact one-cour structure common to manga adaptations in the slice-of-life space.
Fun fact 2: The original creator is Kei Murayama, while the anime's core production team includes director Naoyuki Konno, series composer Touko Machida, and character designer Sakae Shibuya.
Fun fact 3: The visual design credits are unusually granular: Koremi Kishi handled prop design, while Sunao Chikaoka and Eri Irei are both credited for costume design, a useful detail for a series where body types affect clothing and everyday objects.
Fun fact 4: Yukihiro Saitou is credited for both art direction and art design, while Haruko Nobori handled color design, placing much of the show's soft everyday atmosphere in the hands of a small, clearly defined visual team.
Fun fact 5: Despite its niche reputation, the show has measurable database reach: MAL lists it at popularity rank #2397, and AniList records 176 favorites.