Kemono Michi: Rise Up

旗揚! けものみち (Hataage! Kemono Michi)

7.0(1)

Otaku Den

6.6(104,663)

MAL Score

Ranked #7443

Popularity #1318

Comedy
Fantasy
Isekai
Anthropomorphic

Episodes: 12
Duration: 23 min per ep
Aired: Oct 2, 2019 to Dec 18, 2019
Status: Finished Airing

Synopsis

Professional wrestler Genzou Shibata is known in the ring as “Animal Mask,” a powerhouse with a signature tiger motif—and an unusually intense love for animals that shines through his fearsome persona. Even as he battles for the world championship against his longtime rival, the Macadamian Ogre, Genzou’s heart is firmly set on creatures rather than glory.

Mid-match, he’s abruptly summoned to a fantasy kingdom by a princess desperate for help against a growing monster problem. Genzou’s response is anything but heroic: he floors her with a German suplex, bolts from the castle, and sets out on his own. Stranded in an unfamiliar world, he takes up work as a beast hunter, aiming to capture and befriend monsters while chasing his dream of opening a pet shop—alongside the wolf-girl Shigure, the dragon-girl Hanako, and the vampire Carmilla Vanstein.

Otaku Consensus

Kazuya Miura’s direction gets the most from Kemono Michi’s fast, gag-first pacing, with cleanly flowing wrestling action and forceful slapstick producing far more laughs than its modest production might suggest. Its appeal fades when the same comic fixations substitute for character or narrative development, while source readers have been especially harsh on an adaptation they regard as needlessly loose; the result is an effective stress-relief comedy rather than a rewarding long-form isekai.

Why You Should Watch

Watch Kemono Michi if you want KonoSuba-style dysfunctional ensemble comedy without power-scaling lectures, solemn kingdom lore, or a protagonist interested in behaving like a conventional hero. Natsume Akatsuki’s comic instincts surface in clashing personalities, shameless running jokes, and consequences that escalate because nobody in the group can act sensibly for long. The crucial difference is physicality: punch lines arrive through holds, throws, impact timing, and wrestling theatrics rather than dialogue alone, and ENGI’s best sequences give those grapples convincing momentum. Genzou’s total sincerity makes the absurdity sharper, while Shigure supplies the grounded reactions needed to keep the chaos legible. Its 12-episode run works best as a low-commitment barrage of slapstick and creature comedy, not as an adaptation to choose for intricate plotting, deep world-building, or substantial dramatic growth.

Key Characters

G
Genzou Shibata(VA: Katsuyuki Konishi)
Genzou is funny because Katsuyuki Konishi plays his animal obsession with the booming conviction of a wrestling champion, turning even antisocial behavior into a grand declaration of principle.
S
Shigure(VA: Akira Sekine)
Shigure functions as the ensemble’s practical counterweight, with Akira Sekine’s grounded delivery giving the audience a clear reaction point amid Genzou’s escalating fixations.

What Makes It Stand Out

1
Professional-wrestling language is built into the action choreography rather than used as surface decoration: grapples, throws, poses, and impact beats frequently serve as both combat and punch lines.
2
Creature taming replaces the usual isekai progression loop of defeating monsters for levels or status, allowing encounters to undermine the genre’s standard hero-versus-beast assumptions.
3
ENGI’s first television anime production drew qualified praise for its visual presentation and smoothly flowing action, even from critics who found the overall production modest.
4
The 12-episode structure favors recurring slapstick and ensemble friction over a dense quest narrative, making the series play more like a fantasy situation comedy than a conventional adventure.
5
Its comic identity combines kemonomimi, dragons, vampires, anthropomorphic characters, and wrestling parody, a mixture substantially stranger than the generic fantasy framing initially suggests.

Fun Facts & Trivia

Fun fact 1: Original-story creator Natsume Akatsuki is also associated with KonoSuba, which explains why reviewers repeatedly compared the two series’ dysfunctional group dynamics and irreverent treatment of isekai conventions.
Fun fact 2: Kemono Michi: Rise Up was ENGI’s first anime production, a fact that shaped contemporary reviews: critics often treated its fluid action as a promising debut while noting unevenness elsewhere.
Fun fact 3: The design pipeline was unusually distributed: Yumeuta and Mousuke Mattaku supplied the original character designs, Chika Noumi adapted them for animation, and four credited sub-character designers supported the wider cast.
Fun fact 4: Touko Machida handled series composition under director Kazuya Miura, pairing an experienced script coordinator with a studio making its first full production.
Fun fact 5: Its reception remained remarkably consistent across major databases: MyAnimeList recorded 6.59 from 104,612 votes, while AniList reported 64 out of 100 and 655 favourites.