The Fall 2026 Anime Preview Guide

Paw & Palaces

Six cats living in the Forbidden City enter magical inner worlds to protect ancient treasures from evil!

Paw & Palaces is based on the Forbidden City: Cat Imperial Study webcomic by A'Nan and Daitu. The donghua is streaming on Crunchyroll on Saturdays.

NYOOOOOOOOOOOM

SWOOOOOOOOOOSH

That's my impression of the camera in Paw & Palaces. It's not as egregious as certain productions, but it sure did enjoy zooming around, especially during action sequences. I'm generally not a fan of hyperactive cameras, and I prefer to let the action speak for itself and have it express something about the characters, but I have to admit that it worked here. Well, sometimes. Other times, it had the effect of chopping up simple motions like sword swings, creating a disorienting effect that I cannot imagine was intentional.

The overall vibe of the episode is something I can only describe as a Chinese Saturday morning cartoon. Remember those? Not the Chinese part necessarily, I suppose that depends on where you grew up, but when you rolled out of bed and spent hours watching shows where stuff just seemed to happen around a central premise, and you didn't think too hard about it. An opening narration explains that a dark force is attacking the spirits that inhabit cultural assets, so a group of cat are tasked with protecting them. Interdimensionally traveling cats who move through history to prevent the spirits in historical artifacts from getting corrupted? Sure, why not! As long as it looks nice and has some funny jokes, right?

Unfortunately, the episode's experience is seriously marred by some extended transphobia and homophobia. It seems that when the cats jump worlds, some of them occupy the bodies of people involved in the history of the artifact. One of the male cats ends up playing the part as a female proprietor, and the humor gets mean-spirited fast. He's angry and humiliated to have to be a woman, because it's debasing for men to have to act as women. He gets sexually harassed, which is funny... because apperently further humiliation and sex crimes are funny. When he finally starts leaning into the role, the other cats vomit because homosexuality is gross! And after all that, they have a male calico.

It all just sets such an unpleasant pall over the episode that even if I didn't feel like my head were trying to float off into space, I would have had a hard time settling into the episode anyway.

There's something odd about the way Paws & Palaces is paced. For both episodes I've watched, the story cuts off at a weird point, just before something is about to happen but without the sense of foreboding that's usually involved in cliffhangers. Everything just… stops. It feels a bit like it was a movie cut up for TV, but all the episodes are different lengths. Who knows why this is happening! I don't know.

I don't know if it's the writing or if my head has cleared a bit, but I had a much easier time following this episode. Rather, there's an edutainment vibe that reinforces my earlier impression of the show having a distinct children's cartoon feeling. Take something you want the kiddies to learn about – in this case, Chinese cultural assets – and dress it up with a nefarious villain, talking cats, and martial arts. The Three Autumns Cup featured in this episode is a real piece of Ming dynasty pottery, treasured for its exemplary craftsmanship and use of difficult glazing techniques.

The tension ramps up in this episode when Shuang Mei gets his hands… er, paws, on the cup they're seeking to protect. He has to use a bit of trickery to get it on his person, because the nefarious Black Owl has sent assassins after Wan, who wanted to be the one to deliver it to the emperor! Wow, what will happen next? There's also some stuff about the young crown prince's education, and the male calico being ashamed of losing to a member of the embroidered guard…

It's just all so steeped in Chinese cultural context that I never quite understood the expectations and tensions that drove the story forward. (What is an embroidered guard, anyway?) That won't be an obstacle for some and if I really wanted to watch the show, it wouldn't be for me either. However, I don't particularly want to keep watching, so I can safely let go of all the cultural knowledge I lack.

I hate this. Really I do. In watching this episode, the only nice thing I can say about this show is that I've never been more thankful for a sudden cliffhanger ending… because it saved me from watching yet another nausea-inducing fight scene.

Now I know some people will think this show looks great when it comes to combat. The lines are smooth, the clothes detailed, the character proportions constant, and the fight choreography detailed and dynamic. However, this means nothing when you can't actually see what's going on due to the camera work.

Basically, the fight scene camera work is done as if we were watching a live action movie. The camera moves constantly and there are tons of quick cuts—often pausing less than a second before the next. However, the reason why action movies are shot this way is to try and make the subpar choreography exciting or obfuscate the fact the actors themselves can't memorize/perform long fighting routines. As you're literally drawing the action, there is no need to do this in animation.

And if that weren't enough, the show goes all in on mimicking shaky cam. This technique, which uses a hand-held camera, is meant to give you the sense that you are there watching in first person—struggling to keep up with the action. But just like with the quick pans and cuts, if overused, it just makes things look worse for no reason—and can make the viewer motion sick as well.

Basically, this all makes me wonder if Colored-Pencil Animation Design is the Chinese equivalent to GoHands in that they have the technology and skill to animate in truly creative ways, so they go all in on that simply because they can (and regardless of whether it makes sense in the language of film).

Of course, it's not just the visuals I loathe about Paw & Palaces. There's the lazy attempts at humor—not to mention the cross-dressing “jokes” (if they can even be called that). I'm also left with the icky feeling that I'm watching propaganda. After all, the whole show is built around the premise of Chinese cultural artifacts being so important that time traveling cats have to protect them from a malevolent force. And then we have a scene of the young prince reading idealized political doctrine to us—which is then repeated again in the next scene… I don't know; It feels like I am being preached at—and not at all subtly.

Regardless, I'm actively dreading watching the next episode. But hey, maybe, they'll tone things down… Yeah, I don't believe that either.

Sadly, nothing in this second episode has changed my opinion of Paw & Palaces. The animation still makes me want to throw up during every action scene with it's ridiculous amounts of quick cuts and shaky cam—so let's talk about the story instead.

Despite the outwardly creative trappings of having a team of Quantum Leaping anthropomorphized cats, this is pretty much the most bog standard imperial court drama out there. We have two men vying for the emperors favor—in this instance they're fighting for the right to fetch him a pair of masterfully made tea cups. To decide who will get this honor, they have their champions fight, and of course, our time traveling hero wins. Add to this a little switch-a-roo to make sure that the cups aren't stolen and that's the plot of these two episodes in a nutshell.

Now you may have noticed I haven't talk about the characters—not even Shuang Mei, our de-facto protagonist. That's because, at this point, they are one-note—if even that. Shuang Mei is the arrogant one, and then we have the rival, the old man, the little sister, and the… um… the other girl. At the moment, none of them have personalities much less backstories. To say I'm not invested in their struggles would be the understatement of the year.

So if the action makes me sick, the plot is as unoriginal as they come, and the characters might as well be blank slates, what nice can I say about Paw & Palaces? Well, the horses are okay most of the time. This is actually a legitimate compliment as horses are notoriously difficult to animate. Tough a few issue pop up, the horses tend to look realistic—especially in motion. Other than that the character designs work well. Each of the cats is instantly recognizable—even in the quick cut madness of the fight scenes.

But honestly, that's all I can dredge up when it comes to complements. Despite only being four episodes long, I can't imagine ever coming back to finish this donghua. It's failed on every level I care about and is the epitome of beauty only being skin deep.

The basic concept of mixing wuxia fantasy and anthropomorphic cats is one that works shockingly well on paper once you wrap your head around it, though Paw & Palaces immediately stumbles out of the gate by missing the opportunity to go with the obviously superior title localization of The Imperial Paw-lace. I suppose we'll just have to settle for the heroic cat coalition's somewhat amusing name of “The Imperial Caterie.” Once again, I am reminding any and all interested overseas producers that I am available as an expert consultant for all of your “Let's make sure our cartoon sounds as cool as possible in English” needs.

From the get-go, it's clear that Colored Pencil Animation is out to impress with the extremely lavish production being afforded to Paw & Palaces. Being fairly new to the donghua scene, I'm not especially familiar with their back catalog, but its clear that a lot of talent and resources went into crafting this fantastical world. The background art is positively opulent with its colors and details, the anthropomorphic cat characters have all been designed with a keen eye for sharp silhouettes, and the action scenes are eager to show off the flashy use of their rotoscoped and/or motion-captured martial arts choreography.

In fact, this embarrassment of riches might end up being Paw & Palaces Achilles' heel, as the excess can be downright overstimulating. The overstuffed and hyper-detailed aesthetic of the background does suffer from a lack of clarity and focus that feels artificial. The action scenes that our hero cats get up to are cool, but the frenetic camera work cannot settle on a shot for long enough to let the audience fully appreciate the artistry of the fight scenes. The editing is particularly guilty of trying to stuff as much content into just one episode as is humanly (or felinely?) possible, as so many of the shots end up cutting maybe a half-second or more too early. When everything finally does slow down enough to feel like a proper episode of television, Paw & Palaces decides to go way too big with its broad, dated comedy about characters in drag and their shocked, repulsed onlookers.

When you combine the aesthetic excesses with the downright confusing dump of characters and lore that makes up the first half of the episode, Paw & Palace's premiere winds up as a cool idea marred by its overindulgent execution. Believe me, I should be the perfect mark for this Furry Wuxia Martial Arts Extravaganza, but my main emotional response was the overwhelming need to tell everyone involved in this production to dial it down a notch or three.

I just realized that none of the Wuxia Furries in Paw & Palaces have any tails. This bothers me significantly more than you might imagine. If I had to guess, if this isn't merely the result of a boneheaded stylistic choice, perhaps the presence of tails would be too difficult for the animators and CGI artists to account for with all of the high-flying martial arts going on in the show? Either way, it's a damned shame, I tell you. What is even the point of making a show all about anthropomorphic animal characters if you're going to nix the tails? That's, like, thirty-percent of the appeal of furry artwork, snipped away as if by a merciless and unethical veterinarian.

The good news is that Paw & Palaces did listen to my advice and crank its “Opulent Self-Indulgence” dials down a bit compared to that overstimulating premiere. I am sure this is one hundred percent on account of my biting criticism that just got published after the production for the series has already largely concluded, and not at all because it is probably unsustainable to keep up that level of sheer excess for an entire season of television. There are even some moments that I found downright sloppy, like an utterly random crash-zoom into the one little white cat's face that feels like a complete accident, which I don't even think is possible when you're working with an imaginary camera.

Outside of the odd technical slip-up, though, I found Paw & Palaces' second episode to be easier to sit down with and actually follow compared to the first. This is the case on both a visual and a narrative level. Now that the plot of this storyline has nestled into the traditional martial-arts tournament routine, the beats of the episode have more opportunity to breathe, and the cinematography for the fight scenes also seems to have settled down some. This is necessary to appreciate the small but critical movements in the action that make this kind of wuxia-style combat so thrilling, like where Shuang Mei capably deflects Ling Xiao's needles to win the day. Though I am loathe to fall back on the cliche of criticizing a show for being “style over substance,” I do feel like that is how Paws & Palaces is landing for me. The story and characters are going in one ear and out the other, at this point, but when this dongua lets me, I am happy to luxuriate in the fashion, character designs, and pretty kickass fight choreography. Now, if only the show had the good sense to give its furries tails, we might have had a real hit on our paws…

Interdimensional Chinese peacekeeping cats with martial art arts? Yes please! There's something about this set up that feels very similar to a lot of old cartoons I used to watch where the episodes were very much about just throwing you into a premise that acts like it has always existed. There is a team of cats who go out on a variety of different missions in order to maintain peace and order while some of their personalities clash for the sake of banter. The premise is taking center stage, which is at the very least entertaining.

A lot of that comes down to the presentation and fight choreography. If you're going to disregard character for sake of just blind entertainment, then you better make sure that everything looks good. The soundtrack is gorgeous with this beautiful flow to it while the voice acting is very cheeky, if a little bit typical. I'm a little mixed on the fight choreography because while it is very fluid and filled with a lot of weight, I do think the camera is too zoomed in at times for me to fully appreciate what I'm supposed to be looking at. A lot of shots also cut super fast but not in a way that feels like it's being done to communicate the speed of the characters movements. Rather it feels like the director or cinematographer just couldn't decide on what angle they wanted to view a character from so they just yelled “all the angles!”

I do also think that some jokes dragged on a little bit too long, particularly the cross-dressing joke. I understand that the point was to communicate how one of the characters is willing to put up with uncomfortable role-playing for the sake of the mission, but that means I still had to spend a third of the episode watching him in uncomfortable role-playing. It clashes a little bit with this mythical and ethereal tone that the rest of the show is going for so I hope that this was more of a one off rather than indicative of the type of humor the show is going to try implementing to break up the action. I am curious what the resolution of this current mission will be, but I also would not be surprised if the entertainment value of the show as a whole does not elevate beyond this premiere.

Two episodes in and this show has more or less doubled down on its premise and presentation being its main selling points. The mission is everything but the problem is that so far, the mission isn't particularly exciting. The cast infiltrates certain roles and are manipulating things in order to get this special cup, but outside of the cheating that acted at this dramatic beat at the end of episode one, things are mostly going according to plan until the very end of this episode. So far this seems to be the structure, the end of the episode will introduce an inconvenience or twist that almost immediately gets resolved in the following episode before things go according to plan once again. It's a solid structure, but it's not really an exciting one, which is part of the problem.

Usually there's some type of comedy, banter or character growth to fill in a lot of the dead space. Unfortunately, this show doesn't really have any of those things. I don't really know much about this cast outside of how capable they are and even their little jabs at each other don't reveal much about the characters. The only real unique aspect of this show is its presentation and choreography which started feeling a bit flat here.

I'm glad this episode seemed to go for a few more wide shots in order to show off the characters' full bodies when they're engaged in hand-to-hand combat. The problem is that the body movement suddenly became a lot more floaty and unnatural. During the opening fight scene, the two fighters looked like they were on strings the entire time, twirling around and moving in seemingly counterintuitive ways, especially when they were being thrown. Maybe the fight choreographers just feel more confident utilizing weapons because I didn't feel like this was an issue in the following fight scene when they started using swords. That is just something that I noticed, but considering that there isn't much else for me to latch onto, that's not a good sign.