This is a pet comedy WITHOUT romance. In fact, many times, the main character bemoans his lack of a girlfriend.
“Am I A God?” is a story in a world with superpowers. However, these superpowers, when awakened by a meteorite, belong not to humans, but to cats instead. These supercats can also give their powers to certain humans, called Apostles, to borrow until the cat takes them back. There is no seen limit on the number of Apostles a power can be loaned out to. Zhao Yao, the main character, owns a cat named Matcha. The day of the supercat awakening, Zhao Yao is taking Matcha to get sterilized when Matcha suddenly talks to him. Matcha had awakened a superpower. Sterilization removes a cat’s superpower or the possibility to have one. Zhao Yao now has access to a Book that allows to him to essentially contract with supercats. Based on the level of his Book, he can have a limited amount of cats. The Book also allows him to use the superpowers of his contracted cats based on their loyalty level to him, which affects the chance of the superpower activation succeeding. The Book is set up in an RPG style, but a very basic one with XP and a Shop. There are NO stats. This is NOT a heavy RPG-style novel. However, it’s still a great book. Zhao Yao goes around finding other supercats and contracting with them. Whenever he gains XP to a certain amount, he can either give it to his cats or use it on the Book to level them up. Leveling up cats allows him to improve their superpowers, and the Book minorly enhances Zhao Yao’s physique and allows one more cat to be contracted. At some levels of the Book, new items are unlocked in the Shop.
MINIOR SPOILER ALERT:
Matcha has the power to freeze time.
SPOILER OVER
Translation Quality:
The overall translation quality is quite good. The tenses are correct for the first 500+ chapters, not many grammatical errors, etc. However, the translator was recently changed, and the quality has gone down. For example, there are SKIPPED chapters. From chapter 535 onward, the plot dramatically changes and events are referenced that never occurred. I believe that somewhere between 5-15 chapters are missing.
Update Stability:
Several months ago, this would have been five stars, with three chapters every day without fail. Then, it stopped for one and a half months, and came back at a rate of two chapters a week. And every so often, it doesn’t update for the week. As it is now, “Am I A God?” is quite long and will keep you occupied for a while, but don’t expect quick updates.
Story Development:
There is an overall overarching plot here, but it’s one that we only begin to see hints of much later in the story. The beginning of the story is more slice of life style, with Zhao Yao going around undercover, catching cats, working on his cat cafe, and overall finding himself in hilarious situations.
Character Design:
The character design of “Am I A God?” is very good. Each character has their own unique background and personality traits. We have Zhao Yao, the main character, insanely lazy, who wants to make lots and lots of money- but can never seem to keep it. Matcha, Zhao Yao’s original cat with an inflated sense of superiority that always lands him in trouble. Dust Ball, addicted to catmint, and wants to build a catmint empire. Each character has their own motivations and underlying traits as well besides just the main ones listed here. There are other secondary characters as well besides Matcha and Dust Ball, but those are my favorites and I’m too lazy to list the rest.
World Background:
If you are looking for a rich, fleshed-out unique world, this is NOT for you! It takes place on Earth, with an emphasis on China (since Zhao Yao lives there). Later in the story, however, we do eat to see the impact on other nations, such as Japan and the USA, of the supercat awakening. We also find out more about how the superpowers cane to be.
If you are looking for either something with pets or a light-hearted comedy, this is for you! I would highly recommend it to anyone, though, who finds my review interesting. This novel is one of my favorites and receives most of my Power Stones since it doesn’t get enough compared to the rest of my library.
Overall: A Comedic Hidden Gem
