• Title: Wagaya no Oinarisama
• Studio: ZEXCS
• Genre: Fantasy

Ratings (out of 5):

• Story: ♥♥½

• Animation: ♥♥½
• Characters: ♥♥♥
• OP/ED Themes: ♥♥½
• Overall: ♥♥½ (Ehh, so-so.)

Thoughts:
Noboru and Tooru are the sons of a former miko, and heirs to a family with a shrine. Tooru is targeted by a demon, so their grandmother brings them to the shrine to take care of the demon. But apparently the family’s powers have been diminishing over time, so they wind up needing to get external help– from another demon, a fox-demon named Kuugen that has been sealed for some time.

Upon learning who their mother was, Kuugen agrees to help Tooru and takes on a human (female) form…though s/he admits that s/he doesn’t remember what his/her original gender was. (Boy, this is gonna be fun.) Kuugen takes care of the demon, which was a snake demon, and is supposed to be re-sealed.

But Noboru takes pity on her (for simplicity’s sake, we’ll stick with female pronouns) and, as the head of the household now, requests that she not be re-sealed. Kuugen asks if she can be Tooru and Noboru’s inari, their guardian spirit. They agree, and their grandmother sends shrine maiden Kou along with them to make sure nothing goes wrong. And, presumably, highjinks will ensue next episode. It looks like we’ll also see the male version of Kuu-chan (as Tooru labels her).

Now, there is nothing wrong with this series. The animation is decent. The characters are interesting– I especially like that at least thus far, Kuu-chan doesn’t neatly fit into any character archetypes really, and the gender-swapping is probably going to be fun. The story…well, we’ll just have to see.

But there’s nothing really exciting about it either. It’s certainly no Spice and Wolf (in spite of the obvious comparisons), and it might not even be an InuYasha. It’s just all kinda…meh. Sort of a throw-away. It could improve in future episodes, though, so I’ll watch a few more and see.