A Centaur’s Life, is also known as Centaur’s Worries or Sentōru no Nayami. The manga came out for this series back in 2011 and it is still ongoing in 2022. The twelve episode anime was released back in July of 2017 and finished in September of that same year.

Now, to be quite honest with you, this anime is a bit strange. The manga it’s based on is a bit strange too. During the time it was all the rage, releasing with other series of its type; monster/animal girls became a somewhat common trope. The series acted as a curiosity of sorts, earning viewers because of it’s rather odd nature.

That being said, the series is primarily focused upon slice-of-life elements. Set in a world where all people are hybrids of various sorts of fictional creatures such as centaurs, it follows the everyday life of Hime, a… well you guessed it, a centaur. She’s a high school student and the series follows her and the lives of her classmates. In general the general themes of the show covers problems and challenges that Hime and people of other hybrid races like her might face day-to-day.

A Centaur’s Life also contains mildly placed hints at a possible romance between the main character and one of her female friends. Personally, I could take or leave that aspect, it’s cute I guess… but it’s not something I was invested in.

The other major component of the plot revolves around the political reality of this world, and I’m not sure how I feel about it. Now, you might think that the political intrigue will heavily influence the main character’s life in some sort of darker way, but from what we get in the anime that just isn’t the case.

The series boasts a few rather totalitarian themes about forced equality between various mythical races. There’s a tone of extremely harsh penalties of for any discrimination… and while the series isn’t too heavily focused upon it, it does come up enough to be jarring. Even what seems to be children’s books have a weird political bent to them. As though something like democracy is little more than a fairy-tale.

Add onto this that in the twelve episodes, the pacing continues to be slow and unhurried, and the tone feels off somehow. In a way, it’s almost as if the series forgot that it was supposed to be a slice-of-life… but I digress.

In general, the show pieces together a school life story that jumps the shark. A Centaur’s Life is riddled with cases of extreme propaganda, hard pressed security details, and a world that almost seems dystopian despite the slice-of-life tone the series works so hard to convey. It truly gives viewers an unsettling feeling that something very nasty is going on under the surface that the show refuses to truly address deeply.

That being said, A Centaur’s Life isn’t awful… it just don’t know what it seems to want to be as a series. Perhaps the manga is better, but I haven’t read it and I really don’t plan to. The show itself has a few elements I wish had been explored further, and I’m not entirely sure that it would ever make a top ten list of mine, or anyone that I know. It’s not among the worst I’ve seen, but certainly cannot stand as one of the best.

The last episode especially fell flat upon its face, containing absolutely no substance to speak of. To say it was unsatisfying is an understatement, but let’s be honest a lot of anime have that problem. This is certainly one where they want you to go and read the manga, and anime like that become a pet peeve of mine.

A Centaur’s Life had a lot of original and bold ideas, but I’d say that’s the largest problem it had. There were just too many to focus on one aspect, and therefore it all became wasted potential.

Is it worth a watch? Yeah, actually it’s worth streaming it at least once. The experience is worthwhile, because the series does display a few interesting qualities. Does it belong on your prized anime shelf? Probably not, and truth be told if it hasn’t been forgotten about by the masses already it will be in a few more years. It just can’t live up to the test of time.