Take a flight of fancy with this under-the-radar gem. Annie (@annieothername) and Jeff (@jeffinitelyjeff) were kind enough to invite me onto their podcast Love It Or Weeb It to talk (and talk!) (and talk!!) about one of my all-time...
Take a flight of fancy with this under-the-radar gem.
Annie (@annieothername) and Jeff (@jeffinitelyjeff) were kind enough to invite me onto their podcast Love It Or Weeb It to talk (and talk!) (and talk!!) about one of my all-time favorite anime, The Eccentric Family. Join us for a lively discussion of mythology, femme fatales, and adorable tanuki. No hot pots allowed.
You can listen to the episode or keep reading for the full transcript.
Transcript: Love it Or Weeb It, “The Eccentric Family”
DEE: Jeff, stop trying to eat the tanuki!
[Intro music]
ANNIE: Hello and welcome to Love It or Weeb It, where we let you know if we love an anime enough to recommend it to everyone or if it’s just for the worst of the weebs. I’m Annie, and if I was a tanuki I would transform into a shirtless Sephiroth, specifically.
[Chuckling]
ANNIE: Without the jeans! Not the jeans. In his normal outfit.
JEFF: Okay, I’m Jeff, and if I were tanuki I would transform into a shirtless Sephiroth with jeans.
[Chuckling]
DEE: Well, I’m Dee, and if I was a tanuki I wouldn’t transform into anything quite that spicy. Sorry, guys! I would transform into luggage tags on a bag that was going someplace I wanted to visit so I could travel the world for free.
ANNIE: Wow, that’s a good one!
JEFF: Yeah, good answer.
ANNIE: We’re dumb.
DEE: I thought really hard about that!
ANNIE: We’re dumb!
DEE: [Laughs] Hey, it’s okay: you made somebody’s day by being shirtless Sephiroth when you made that transformation, so it all worked out.
ANNIE: That’s true.
JEFF: I briefly considered, like, should I be the sword instead so I can be held by shirtless Sephiroth? Then…
DEE: [Chuckles]
ANNIE: [feigning annoyance] No!
JEFF: Or should I be the jeans?
DEE: Extra spicy.
JEFF: So, yeah, if you haven’t guessed, we have a special guest this week. It’s Dee, a.k.a. Josei Next Door. Welcome to the show!
DEE: Hi, thanks for having me! I’m excited to be here.
ANNIE: Whoo!
JEFF: Yeah! So if you’re new to the podcast, each week we watch the first three episodes of a new anime and cast our votes to love it or weeb it. But today Annie is cashing in on her victory of the summer season to do a classic review of The Eccentric Family, both seasons of which are available subbed on Crunchyroll and VRV. But before we get into the meat (the tanuki meat?) of the episode—
DEE: No, never!
ANNIE: [crosstalk] Stop! Stop!
DEE: Have you learned nothing from this show? Don’t eat tanuki.
JEFF: [Chuckles] Before we get into the meat of the episode, we’re gonna do our general anime check-in. So, for me and Annie, we only have a week’s worth of stuff to catch up on. But Dee, have you been in recent times watching or reading anything in the realm of anime particularly notable you wanna talk about?
DEE: I mean, as we’re recording this, we’re in the middle of premiere season, so I have been completely taken over by premieres. But before then, it was just seasonal anime, wasn’t it? As far back as the eye can see! I’m just chained to the season! I was going to try to recommend a manga, but my brain is fuzzy right now with titles that I’ve been catching up on.
Oh, I know! Kageki Shoujo, I will mention as a recommendation. It is a manga that came out really recently from Seven Seas. It’s about these girls who are training to basically be Takarazuka-style performers—so, like musical theater. And it’s really good. Some content warnings for eating disorders and some assault stuff, but it’s delicately handled. But it was really, really good, and I guess they’re making an anime out of it sometime soon, so now is a great time to jump into this story.
JEFF: It looks really nice. I was a little confused because I was like, “Is this not Revue Starlight?” It’s like similar words but flipped around, so it’s not quite Revue Starlight.
DEE: Yeah, and it’s more of a character drama. It focuses on the two main girls, whose names escape me at the moment, but very much on becoming a performer and the classes they have to take and the kind of things they have to do in school, and the two of them getting to know each other and dealing with their past histories and why they’re in the program and… Yeah, I really liked it. It essentially is a prequel, and there’s a second series that I think Seven Seas is eventually going to publish as well. But I’m really excited for the upcoming anime of it, as well. So, it’s great!
JEFF: [crosstalk] Oh, cool. Speaking of the premiere season that you’re in the middle of, is there any one show that stands out to you, that you’re most excited about?
DEE: Probably Otherside Picnic was my favorite. It wasn’t a surprise. It’s the yuri about the two college girls who hunt cosmic horrors in another world.
ANNIE and JEFF: Ooh!
DEE: The first episode, I enjoyed quite a bit. And then I guess my big surprise was 2.43, which is the volleyball show. I thought it would kind of be a Haikyu knockoff, and it’s actually a really, really well-done character drama. And the two boys will not stop blushing at each other.
ANNIE: [Gasps] Sign me up!
DEE: Yeah! So, those are my two premiere picks after a single episode. So, you know, knowing premieres, something will disappoint me, but those were the two that stand out at this point.
JEFF: Nice. So, Annie, I assume you’re gonna disappoint me and have nothing to say?
ANNIE: Okay, I have something to say, but I don’t like that I’m saying it.
JEFF: Oh no.
ASHLEY: So, you know how I was reading that webtoon True Beauty and I really liked it, and it turned into a drama? Well, since the drama got popular, people have been talking about it and someone pointed out that the webtoon was originally fanfiction about a BTS member.
JEFF: What?
ASHLEY: And now I can never read it again! [Chuckles]
JEFF: Wait. Like, they gender-swapped?
ANNIE: No! True Beauty, one of the love interests…
JEFF: Oh.
ANNIE: … is based on Jin from BTS.
JEFF: Wait, so, it’s like what if a BTS guy fell in love with me?
ANNIE: That’s what it kind of feels like, yeah! So now I can’t read the webtoon anymore!
DEE: You can’t unsee that, huh?
ANNIE: I can’t unsee it, because someone did a side-by-side of all of Jin’s outfits and then the character Su-ho’s outfits, and I was like, “Dang it! This is just a copy of this man. I gotta go!”
JEFF: I mean, at least it’s not like… You don’t know if the main character is a self-insert, right?
ANNIE: Feels like a self-insert.
JEFF: Oh. Well, then maybe that’s a little awkward.
ANNIE: It feels a little self-inserty. And I was like, “Dang! Now I’m embarrassed.”
[Chuckling]
ANNIE: I did catch up just to make sure that that was the case. But yeah, I did catch up with that. I’m always caught up on True Beauty! [Chuckles]
JEFF: It turns out that the real true beauty was the BTS…
ANNIE: BTS fanfiction—
DEE: —that we made along the way?
[Chuckling]
JEFF: The only thing I’ve read or watched since we last talked was… I read all of Our Dreams at Dusk: Shimanami Tasogare.
DEE: Yes, very good.
JEFF: Which I picked for a book club because I heard so much praise for it over the years. I did not realize that I’ve been to that town.
DEE: Oh, wow!
JEFF: I was like, “Oh, wait. This is very familiar. Why is it so familiar? Oh, wait.” I also feel especially stupid because I did the bike route that starts in that town. It’s called the Shimanami Kaido, and somehow I did not notice that that was in the name of the series, Shimanami Tasogare. [Chuckles]
DEE: Just never quite made the connection.
JEFF: Yeah! I’m just a dummy. But—
ANNIE: Also, we get it: you’ve been to Japan.
JEFF: Okay.
[Chuckling]
JEFF: I guess it does sound like humblebragging.
ANNIE: [sarcastic] Wow, remember when I was in that town doing a bike ride?
DEE: Jeff, don’t worry about it: I was planning to humblebrag about my trip to Kyoto later in this episode, so you’re good!
JEFF: [crosstalk] Ooh!
[Chuckling]
JEFF: But yeah, Our Dreams at Dusk is very, very, very good. I had one qualm with it, which… it’s very realistic aside from like one slash of magical realism that is, I think, a little too extreme, which might be a topic we get to this episode in general. But aside from that splash of magical realism I don’t know if I loved, the rest of the manga is very fantastic and is some well-needed queer representation in manga, so I would definitely recommend people check it out.
DEE: Yeah, I’d sign my name to that as well. It’s a really, really good series.
JEFF: Yeah. I really enjoyed the Chatty AF episode talking about it, with Dee on.
DEE: Aw. Thank you!
JEFF: Yeah.
DEE: Yeah, that was a fun one to do.
JEFF: I’ll have a link to that in the show notes. People can check that out as well and listen to more thoughts about that series.
DEE: Heck yeah!
JEFF: All right, so, now let’s jump into the hot pot to get boiled and…
ANNIE: [crosstalk] Stop! [Chuckles]
DEE: Jeff, stop trying to eat the tanuki!
JEFF: No, I’m proposing we are the tanuki and we’re gonna get eaten.
ANNIE: I don’t wanna be eaten!
DEE: I don’t want to be a part of your vore fantasy.
ANNIE: Yeah!
JEFF: Oh no.
DEE: [Laughs]
JEFF: Okay, so we’re talking about The Eccentric Family. Dee, as the guest, we are asking you to… as the guest to our Friday Fellows, um, we are—
DEE: That works.
ANNIE: [crosstalk, exasperated] Oh my God.
JEFF: —burdening you with the entertainment and… This connection is not working very well. But yeah, can you explain to listeners what this show is about?
DEE: Yeah, sure. So, The Eccentric Family takes place in a fantastical version of Kyoto, Japan, where humans and tanuki and tengu all kind of mingle together. And most of the humans don’t know that the tanuki and the tengu are in the town.
For folks who don’t know, tanuki are raccoon dogs, and folklore-wise, they tend to be known as shapeshifters and tricksters, usually benign, just like practical jokesters, but sometimes they can get a little nasty.
And then tengu are… It depends on what folklore you’re looking at, but they’re usually depicted as flying bird-like human creatures. Somewhat like tanuki, they can be tricksters. They tend to be a little bit more dangerous. Sometimes they have wind magic, and they’re known for being extremely proud and sometimes abducting people and teaching them magic.
So, the story takes place in a world that blends all those folklore elements together. But it mostly follows the Shimogamo family, which is a tanuki family of four sons and their mom. And the main character’s Yasaburo, the third son, who likes to hang out with tanuki—sorry—well, sometimes with the tanuki because he is a tanuki, but also likes to hang out with humans and tengu and cause mischief and get the groups to intermingle.
And without spoiling anything, it essentially follows him and his family shortly after the death of their father as they are coming to terms with that and discovering some details about his death, and then the story just goes from there into almost a daily living of how things go for them over the course of a couple of years.
Does that cover everything, do you guys think? Did I summarize it well enough?
ANNIE: Yeah! That’s good.
DEE: Okay, cool.
JEFF: And I think in terms of discussing the show, it’s a little bit hard to separate out non-spoiler discussion from plot-relevant spoiler thoughts because everything kind of interweaves with each other, but I wanted to have us go around and basically give our impressions of the show and a brief pitch for, if we really loved it, why people should go check it out if they haven’t, and then we’re going to pull the spoiler lever and just go full in on everything.
ANNIE: Okay.
JEFF: Annie, this was your pick.
ANNIE: This was my pick! Okay, so this is one of my favorite shows of all time. I just find it so pleasant and kind of like slice-of-life but with that little bit of fun magic in it, like this could be real but it’s not. But it could be.
[Chuckling]
ANNIE: I don’t know. It’s just a lot of fun and I thought, “Yasaburo’s attitude of ‘Hey, I’m just kind of doing this because of my…’” (what did he call it?) idiot blood or fool’s blood or whatever? And he’s just doing what he wants to do, and I kind of love that energy! And I just like watching everybody have a good time and have bad times. And Benten’s hot, so…
[Chuckling]
ANNIE: That’s my pitch for this show.
JEFF: All right. Dee, I was interested in having you on because when I was looking through my Twitter timeline of people that have talked about the show, I’d seen that you wrote really enthusiastic articles for Crunchyroll about it and seem to really love it. So I decided to have you on. What are your thoughts on the show?
DEE: I absolutely adore it. Yeah, it’s top ten, possibly top five. I haven’t put a list together in a while, so I’m not sure where it would actually sit on there. But yeah, it’s one of my favorite anime ever.
Kind of like Annie was saying, the sort of fantasy slice-of-life, the way it… I saw somebody one time describe it as a weird show that doesn’t act like it’s weird. I mean, there’s transformations and people flying around and there’s ships in the sky and floating teahouses. And you walk through a door and suddenly are at the ocean, basically. And it’s very much got that matter-of-fact quality that you find in a lot of older folklore, where the magic doesn’t need an explanation; it just exists. It is part of this world. And I think that was what really kind of drew me into it: beautiful art and then that whole tone that the show had.
And then as you go, it really starts to develop the characters and the family dynamic with the Shimogamo brothers and their mom that I think is really, really well done and provides a very human element to a story that could’ve just been a lot of spectacle. And I think that’s what gives it a lot of its staying power: there are multiple moments in this series where I will tear up or laugh out loud and get really invested in these delightful furballs. So, I think it’s kind of the full package.
Yeah, I’ve written an article about it. When I traveled to Kyoto, I made a point of going to some of the different temples and things that are in the show because I wanted to see them. I am sitting here with a Yajiro plushie. So, I adore this show and I recommend it to everybody I can.
JEFF: Is that an official plushie or was it commissioned?
DEE: Yeah, so, the city of Kyoto got really excited about Eccentric Family, so when we went, there was still… It was like a year later after the second season had aired, but you could still find… they did special events around the city and had little character prop-ups and stuff. And the Shimogamo Shrine, and then there were a few other places where, in their gift shop, they’d even have a few little Eccentric Family items.
JEFF: Aw.
DEE: So I ended up getting this cute little drawstring bag that has character outlines on it. It’s an adorable little bag. And then at the Animate in Kyoto, they still had some merch, so, keychains and plushies and stuff. And I kick myself to this day: I had the opportunity to get all four Shimogamo brothers as plushies, and I only got Yajiro the frog because I was worried about fitting them all in my suitcase. And I totally could have and I totally should have! But I’ve got Yajiro with me today.
ANNIE: I love him.
JEFF: Nice. Well, okay, not to be a downer…
ANNIE: [Gasps] Jeff, you need to leave!
DEE: Uh-oh.
JEFF: Okay, so—
ANNIE: Jeff, if it’s not glowing praise I want you to hang up this call.
JEFF: Okay, so I’m the only one that watched it for the first time for this podcast, and I had heard so much praise about it over the years… I guess my memory is failing because I thought recently there was a scare of it disappearing from Crunchyroll and then being added back a couple months later. But apparently that was way back in 2016, before the second season aired, and my memory is fading. Things that I thought were recent were a while ago. But yeah, I remember when there was that scare, I was like, “Oh, man, I should go watch it because everyone loves that show,” and I just never got around to it, so I was happy when Annie forced me to watch it, because I was like, “Oh, I’ve been meaning to watch it for a while.”
And in terms of making our “Love It or Weeb It” verdict, I am on the fence because I did not universally love it. I like a lot of it, but I feel like there was a lot that just didn’t vibe with me. I think a lot of the… There are lots of things that I can appreciate on paper that none of the actual emotional impact watching felt a little… It just didn’t give me the biggest impact, especially, like I think Dee was saying, about treating these fantastical things as very normal and not worth commenting on. I see how that fits into their world, but it just made a lot of times where I was just confused by everyone’s behavior and people were acting very illogical or unreasonable in ways I just couldn’t really comprehend what the thought processes were.
I think it comes down to: I love everything about the families. Everything that is in the show about family relationships, that is centered around the Shimogamo family and the brothers and especially the brothers’ grief for their recently-passed-away father, all of that was fantastic. I even liked all the stuff with the rival Ebisugawa family. I thought that was all fantastic. Everything Benten and most things tengu, I just did not like at all and I just found very hard to relate to.
And yeah, there’s a lot… The first episode in particular I felt was the most… After episode 1, I was like, “I don’t think I like this show at all.” And then episode 2 and onwards, I was like, “I do like this show. I just don’t like the fact that episode 1 focused on mainly the Akadama and Benten stuff, which I found to be the weakest part of the show—or not the weakest part of the show but the part I could relate to the least and was just the most wrapped in mystery.”
So, I have mixed feelings. But I think it’s still a really fun show, and I think it’s basically like, if someone’s interested in Japanese folklore, 100% they should go watch it and try it out. And if someone has no knowledge of Japanese folklore and isn’t really interested in learning about Japanese folklore, they might have a harder time. But I think if you have any inclination towards folklore, you’d really appreciate this show.
ANNIE: So you didn’t like Benten at all? That’s all I’m taking away from this.
DEE: [Chuckles]
JEFF: I mean, I could tell while I was watching, “I bet Annie loves this character.”
ANNIE: Yes, I do!
JEFF: I… There’s a lot that I do not like about how this show handles its female characters, and I feel like Benten is, in some ways, the epitome of it. And some of it is grounded in the actual folklore details, like about how tengu are known to kidnap children and train them in Noh. But there’s a lot of huge gaps in the show that I find very uncomfortable, and Benten is at the center of a lot of them.
ANNIE: But I love her. I want to say so many things, but I can’t spoil things yet, I guess. Ah!
JEFF: Okay, well, that’s kind of my thoughts on being very mixed about the show.
DEE: I’m kind of with Annie. I’m like… how much do I want to say at this point? I see where you’re coming from. I do think that this is one where if you’re not interested in folklore in general and if you’re not willing to kind of let yourself sink into that sort of folkloric logic, if that makes sense…
Because I think there are frequently times in this show where things that would bother me if the characters were humans don’t bother me because I’m like, “Well, yeah, I mean, they’re the raccoon dogs. Of course that’s the way they see the world.” And I appreciate series that kind of force you to look at things a little bit sideways, and I think Eccentric Family does that with its characters sometimes in ways that are really interesting to me.
I’m also not… I think… So, supposedly, The Eccentric Family was going to be a three-novel… It was supposed to be a trilogy. And the third novel hasn’t come out yet, and the anime has adaptations of the first two. So, as much as I adore this show, there is this tiny part of me that is aware that how the show wraps will significantly impact a lot of things.
Because I think Benten is fascinating. I think she exists in this space between being a really well-written, fleshed-out character and being this kind of stereotypical mysterious woman who you can never understand. And I keep feeling like it’s right on the edge of really digging into that, and so the way the story wraps her arc up will have a lot of impact on how I feel about the series as a whole.
So, I totally get your discomfort there. I also think I would argue that I think the show wants us to find that a bit discomforting. I think Akadama is supposed to not be particularly likable. And I think we’re not supposed to quite know what to think of Benten because Yasaburo is not quite sure what to think of her either. So I think some of that is baked into the story, but I can also understand how it could keep you at arm’s length or not necessarily be enjoyable to watch. So, I get that.
ANNIE: Yeah. I get that. Well, because I like Benten’s story a lot, not just because of, like, wow, she’s gorgeous, but [chuckles] I felt, without revealing anything too much, that a lot of it’s like this is her story secretly and we’re watching how she’s recovering or taking control of her life and the world around her.
DEE: Yeah, I agree with that.
ANNIE: And she’s my main character for this. And so, I do want it to wrap up differently, but watching what she goes throughout these seasons, I was just so invested in it and to her!
DEE: I agree. I do kind of feel like she’s the secret protagonist, which, again, is why there’s this part of me that’s like, “I just need to know how it wraps up, Morimi! How are you going to do this?”
ANNIE: Tell us! [Chuckles]
JEFF: Yeah, I’ve heard (I don’t know how official this was or if it was a rumor or if it was the author’s stated goal) that the third book was… that their idea was for it to be titled The Great Tengu War, so it seems like it would center on Benten even more, probably, based on that.
DEE: Mm-hm. Well, I mean, the second season to me very much feels like a bridge to the third book and the setup for what’s going on with Benten and the Nidaime—which, I think saying that isn’t… I don’t think that’s a spoiler because nobody who’s listening to this will know who the Nidaime is. [Chuckles]
JEFF: That is something that I’ve heard. Going into it, I didn’t really know what people thought about season 1 versus season 2 and I was really excited. I thought season 2 was going to be better in every way. And listening to some podcasts afterwards, it seems like people are a lot more mixed on season 2 than season 1.
DEE: Mm-hm. Yeah.
JEFF: And I definitely see that now, and I think I kind of agree that I think I enjoyed season 1 more. But also, season 2 is based on the second book, which is titled The Nidaime Returns. And after having watched season 2… we can get into this more when we get to spoilers, but I’m like, I don’t see the point of the Nidaime returning. So it does kind of feel like: why was there a second book/season? Which probably will make sense once there’s a third. But for now, I’m kinda like, “Hm.”
DEE: I think it kind of ties into what Annie was talking about, as Benten being the secret protagonist, and the Nidaime returning is very much a challenge to Benten’s power. Because in the first season, she is the most powerful character and owns it in a lot of ways, and so season 2 is her having to deal with somebody else being as strong or stronger than she is.
And yeah, I think having that in the background… And again, it’s all told through Yasaburo’s perspective, so there’s a lot of gray areas, the biggest one for me being: was Benten excited to be abducted by tengu or did she just kind of go along with it because she had no choice? So, yeah.
JEFF: See, that to me feels like the bit of… I’m very happy to throw up my hands and let the show guide me when people are acting irrationally, if that irrationality is very founded in folklore. So, tengu kidnapping children and raising them or teaching them or whatever, once I heard that that was a fundamental piece of tengu lore, then I was like, “okay, I take what’s happening in the show a lot less literally and more as within the folklore space of the show.”
But the stuff that I find the most frustrating in the show, aside from Benten, is the whole Friday Fellows/Friday Club/Thursday Club, all of that stuff, and about the eating of tanuki in hot pots. Which, I’ve looked into that a decent amount; it seems like that’s not really based in folklore; that’s based more in economics and classism of whether people had to eat tanuki to survive or not, and it’s not really about… It doesn’t seem like the Friday Fellows are a concept that comes from folklore. It seems like it’s just a weird quirk of the show, and that’s where I’m like, “Hm. Okay, weird.” But maybe we should get into spoilers to talk about that in more detail.
ANNIE: Yes. Whoo!
DEE: Yeah, I think that’s a good idea.
JEFF: Okay, I’m pulling the lever. It’s all spoilers from here on out.
ANNIE: Yeah, go away if you haven’t watched it/don’t want to be spoiled!
[Chuckling]
ANNIE: Okay, where do we start?
DEE: Annie, you were sitting on a lot that you wanted to say, so if you want to kick us off, I’d say go for it.
ANNIE: Okay. I’m obsessed with Benten. She’s my icon. She’s doing whatever she wants to do, and I feel like she’s really taking back control of her life and herself because she was literally abducted by this gross old man who’s a tengu.
And for me, watching her be powerful and not talk to him and kind of mess around with his emotions was her taking revenge and just flexing her power now, and she’s like, “Yeah, I’m powerful. I’m a tengu, basically. If this is what happened to me and my life was taken over by this being, I’m gonna own it and I’m gonna be stronger than he ever was.” And I was like, “Ugh, I love this!” I love this story for her. And, I don’t know, it felt like her rebelling against her, I guess, trauma from being kidnapped! And she did feel bad, I felt, about eating their dad.
[Chuckling]
DEE: Yeah, she definitely did.
ANNIE: She cried a little. But I think she was just trying to, well, one, fit in with the Friday Fellows, the humans, because she’s technically human. So she’s trying to find that balance between being in the human world and this magical world. And every minute of it, I was waiting for her! [Chuckles]
JEFF: I don’t think she was sad enough. That’s why I find it frustrating. [Chuckles]
DEE: I think… So, one thing, Jeff, and I guess this is directed specifically at you, sorry…
[Chuckling]
DEE: One great thing about Eccentric Family is every time I watch it, I pick up on other things and I enjoy it more. And I’ve seen it several times now, and I’m always surprised that the next time I watch it I’m like, “I like it even more than I did the last time! Wow!” And it is because you’ll pick up on little nuggets dropped or you’ll pay… There’s a lot in the art that is this kind of subtext of the characters that you won’t necessarily pick up the first time you’re watching it because, you know, you’re watching it to see what happens next.
And Benten is very quietly sad around Yasaburo a lot, and it kind of plays into this… kind of what Annie was saying: I do think that a lot of Benten’s arc is about her trying to kind of take back and regain power over people who have wielded power over her for so long.
But at the same time, there are costs that she had to pay to get to that position, and there are moments where… One of my favorite scenes is right after the… (it’s also one of my favorite episodes of anime, period) is after Yasaburo entertains the Friday Fellows in the first season and they go on that rooftop walk, him and Benten and Yodagawa. And Benten throughout that, it feels like she’s always kind of trying to apologize to him but doesn’t know how to do it and eventually sort of just disappears sadly into the autumn leaves.
And I think that push and pull with her character is really fascinating as somebody who has kind of become isolated by the sheer amount of power she wields and what she had to do to get to that position. Which is also why I think season 2 is really interesting because I think it sets us up with the possibility of her possibly finding somebody who’s on equal footing with her in the Nidaime, and so where that situation goes in the third book to me will be really, really interesting to see.
ANNIE: Yeah, I feel like that’s why she likes Yasaburo so much, is because he’s the only one who’s not terrified of her and he still messes with her and hangs out with her, and she’s like, “That’s why you’re my favorite.”
DEE: Well, and they’re both kind of tricksters, right? Both of them are very much into “Oh, this might be interesting” or “Oh, this might be fun. Let’s just do it and see what happens.” And so, I think they’re kind of cut from the same cloth in that respect.
JEFF: I guess I just… Hm. The stuff that I find awkward about Yasaburo and Benten’s relationship is that I guess it felt like this threat of getting eaten in a hot pot was brought up so much, but it never felt like it made sense to me the way they were acting about it.
As I was thinking about why it felt frustrating, I kept thinking about Beastars, another show where there is a natural predator-and-prey dynamic, but I never felt that kind of confusion watching Beastars because it felt like the characters were almost the other extreme where it was like, “You are my natural predator. I don’t even want to be around you. I’m scared to be around you,” and they’re allowed to be like, “No, we’re in school. It’s normal. I’m not going to eat you.”
And this, instead, felt like lots of characters bringing up “Benten could eat us! Benten could eat us!” and Yasaburo [being] like, “I’m fine, though.” And it’s like, but why are you so overly confident? Why are you so chill about this when your dad just died by her hands?
ANNIE: Well, they were friends! They were both students under, what’s his name, Akadama.
JEFF: Yeah… And… Actually, looping back to a point you made, Dee, about appreciating things more on rewatch, I got a taste of that because I disliked episode 1 so much and was so confused by things that were going on, that once I finished I went back and didn’t watch the whole episode but I watched a decent part of it, and I was able to pick up on a lot more things that I did not understand and there was a lot more nuance and subtle details that I appreciated a lot more. So, I definitely think that if I did go back and rewatch it, I would appreciate the nuance and not be so caught up on the bigger plot things, that I would maybe notice the smaller character details.
DEE: Yeah. Yasaburo’s definitely a character I appreciate more and more every time I rewatch the show. There’s a definite discomfort around Benten, especially in that first season, because… And he is kind of always digging at her about the hot pot stuff and “Oh, but you’re actually a terrible human. You can call yourself a tengu all you like, but…”
So, their relationship is very tense, but I think a lot of it comes down to the fact that he was madly in love with her and then this terrible thing happened to his dad that she was a part of, and he doesn’t know how to reconcile those two feelings. [Chuckles]
ANNIE: Mm-hm. Ugh, it’s so good.
JEFF: Well, okay, so I was alluding to it before, but I find that I would be a lot more accepting of the way that everyone was acting about the hot pot death if the Friday Fellows or Friday Club were a thing rooted in a folklore and them eating tanuki was a thing that was a base fact about folklore, but it seems like it’s a base fact of this world and I never understood why. It felt like it was like this is a tradition that can never be changed up until the end of season 1 where Yodagawa betrays them and says that he is gonna change it.
ANNIE: Yeah. Well, it’s a fictional version of Japan, because…
JEFF: [feigning surprise] What?
DEE: [Chuckles]
ANNIE: Because tengus don’t actually exist. So it’s just a world where that’s the tradition.
JEFF: I guess… [Sighs]
ANNIE: You gotta get rid of this world in your mind, Jeff. You gotta get emerged [sic] in this fictional version of Japan, because I can definitely see there’s, like, a weird secret society that’s like, “We have to eat this one animal every year on the same day.” That probably exists. I don’t even know. But…
JEFF: So, apparently, eating tanuki is a thing that… I think they mention this in the show, that tanuki are known for eating lots of bad ingredients. They’re known for tasting bad because they eat such bad stuff, so that’s why it’s generally like you would never choose to eat tanuki, so it was apparently a thing historically you’d only do if you were very poor, you had no other choices. And so, it’s become a weird thing that no one would choose to do now when people aren’t as limited for food sources. And so it’s just weird that there’s this secret society, which I also don’t… I never understood the secret society.
ANNIE: They’re just a weird, old secret society.
JEFF: It never felt grounded.
ANNIE: It doesn’t need to be grounded, Jeff. It’s a mysterious—
JEFF: [seeking to clarify] No, no, no, no, no…
DEE: Jeff, they’re just the rich, old, powerful dudes of the city who have been getting together for centuries and continue to do so. And also, honestly, I kinda love the idea that this meal that used to be only something that you would eat when you were destitute and starving has now become a delicacy in the modern world because nobody else does it, because that’s such a thing old rich people would do! [Chuckles]
And I mean, I think the other thing to keep in mind with Eccentric Family and the world they inhabit is most of the humans have no idea that tanuki are sentient creatures. They’re just raccoon dogs to them. They’re not aware of the mythological world around them.
Some of them are. Especially in season 2, we start to get a feel for the people who know what’s going on below the surface. I think the fact that Jurojin leads the Friday Fellows and is very deeply steeped in the magic-and-wizardry side of Kyoto, I feel like that probably has something to do with the fact that they’re doing the tanuki hot pots, because I think Jurojin sucks.
[Chuckling]
DEE: But, again, I feel like they’re setting him up to be a main antagonist maybe in the next book, and so it’s hard to… Some of the things in this show are really hard to talk about because of the unfinished nature of the source material.
JEFF: I guess I just feel like Yodagawa-sensei epitomizes for me what I find so weird about how they treat the sentience of the tanuki, because before he met Soichiro and talked with Soichiro, it seems like he, I assumed, thought tanuki were not sentient. And then he talks to Soichiro, and it seems like that should be a mind-shattering reveal.
DEE: He says afterwards, though, that he assumes he fell asleep and had a dream.
JEFF: [realizing] Oh.
DEE: [crosstalk] When he tells Yasaburo about it, he’s like, “I had such a strange dream about this tanuki spirit talking to me about how it didn’t mind us eating it because it had lived this full life.” And then at the end of every season, Yasaburo catches up with him and he’s like, “I don’t know how to explain what happened the night of Friday Fellows! What a weird night!”
JEFF: I guess I was just confused, then, because then there was also the episode where Benten basically drags Yasaburo to the Friday Fellows and makes him perform as entertainment. And I could have sworn that episode he explains that he can transform because he’s a tanuki to Yodagawa.
DEE: At the club meeting, they say something like, “Oh, man! You’re just like a tanuki with your transformation art,” and he’s like, “Ha-ha-ha, yeah, I’m totally a tanuki.” But again, you have to remember that the humans in this world… I mean, it’s like if you met somebody who was a really good magician, you’re like, “Man, it’s like you’re a real wizard!” and they were like, “Yep! I’m a wizard.” You would just assume they were kidding.
JEFF: Yeah. [Chuckles]
DEE: But they actually are a wizard! Surprise!
JEFF: Okay. So that definitely colored my interpretation of all the scenes with Yodagawa later on, especially when he was on the… I think it was in that same episode or after the meeting, when he’s on the roof with…
DEE: Yeah, and they’re having the philosophical conversation about consuming meat, basically? Yeah.
JEFF: I just found that that philosophical conversation was very interesting, but also colored by my interpretation that he was at the end of the day justifying killing sentient beings. I was just like, “This is an interesting idea but also complete BS because he’s talking about killing sentient beings.”
DEE: Yeah. But no, he still thinks that tanuki aren’t sentient.
JEFF: Okay, so I guess even by the end of season 2, he still doesn’t think they’re sentient.
DEE: No. Yodagawa has not put those pieces… The sweet idiot, who I love very much, has not put those pieces together. But, by God, he’s gonna rescue every tanuki in Kyoto if he can!
JEFF: Okay, so that changes my interpretation a lot.
ANNIE: He is a sweetie. He’s dumb but he’s a sweetie.
JEFF: I did not like, though… This is only a tiny part of the series, so maybe I’m reading too much into it, but when he gets… not fired but he gets kicked out of teaching, I think, from his university because he is quote-unquote “framed for sexual harassment”?
DEE: Yeah, I didn’t care for that.
ANNIE: Oh, yeah. Didn’t like that one bit. There’s a lot of things I didn’t like.
[Chuckling]
JEFF: [Gasps] Annie, I heard that if you aren’t glowingly positive about everything about the show, then you’re gonna get kicked off the call.
ANNIE: [crosstalk] No, your overall interpretation has to be glowingly positive, but you can nitpick at things. Like, Jeff, you sent me a screenshot of the first episode…
JEFF: Oh yeah! [Chuckles]
ANNIE: And I was like, “Yeah, I wouldn’t like that either if I didn’t already know the rest of it was good!” It was when Yasaburo’s transformed into a girl and he goes and visits the professor, like “Won’t this cheer you up? I’m a schoolgirl!” And I was like, “Ugh!”
DEE: Yeah.
ANNIE: “Let’s go past it. Let’s go past it.” [Chuckles]
JEFF: Yeah, that was another angle of the first episode that I really did not like, and the fact that it’s never really brought up again, him transforming into that schoolgirl look, made me wonder if it was an anime-original thing to frame the world in a little side story kind of thing.
DEE: Yeah, I’m obviously also not fond of the series starting off that way. Though I do like that it kind of sets up the fact that tanuki are pretty chill about gender presentation, because then his mom walks around as a prince, which is so great!
ANNIE: [crosstalk] Oh, I love her!
DEE: So, that was the one thing I didn’t like about it. But yeah, no, Akadama is an old creep, and I, 90% of the time, do not like him. He’s very much an old tengu, I think, in a lot of ways.
JEFF: I think it’d be more accepting of his old tengu ways if the characters hated on him more for it. I feel like everyone’s kind of accepting of it.
DEE: Yeah. I do agree. I think they… Well, on the one hand, there was, I think, for a long time, the fear that he would trash their homes because he was this all-powerful tengu. And now I think Yasaburo just pities him, honestly. We know there was some incident that he and Benten did to trick him, and it ended up in blowing out his back and not being able to fly anymore.
And so, we definitely start the story with Akadama at his lowest— I think we start the story with most of the characters at their lowest point and then kind of go from there. So, he gets a little better in season 2. He’s kind of nice to the Shimogamo family in season 2. But it’s hard to forget the fact that he starts the show as an old creep.
JEFF: I think Yasaburo gets to a lower point in season 2 when he goes to Hell, but…
DEE: [Laughs] Quite literally a lower point. But, oh, he was kind of having fun, though. He got to transform into an oni and watch some wrestling, so it all worked out.
JEFF: So, is that supposed to be… Do we think that’s literally Hell and the painting was a portal to Literal Hell, or was it like a world within the painting?
ANNIE: I thought it was a portal to Literal Hell, but I might be wrong.
DEE: Yeah, I’m pretty sure it is a portal to Literal Hell. Well, the Hell Screen is… Oh, God, I’m looking this up as we’re doing this, so you might need to cut some information.
No, so, the Hell Screen is a reference to an Akutagawa story about an artist who gets commissioned to paint the painting of Hell that we see in the picture. And I can’t remember within the story itself if there’s anything about the screen being a literal portal to Hell or not, but I do know that it’s kind of toying with that concept.
But yeah, I mean, when the demon arms come out at the end and drag Soun and Tenmaya down to Hell, I’m pretty sure they’re going to Literal Hell, where they honestly belong at this point in the story.
JEFF: Yeah, when season 2 started and it was like, okay, it’s gonna be introducing all these new characters, these new family members, and then Tenmaya, I was like, “I’m so intrigued to see how Tenmaya fits into things,” and by the end I was like, “No, get him away. I don’t want to see him at all.”
ANNIE: Go to hell, Tenmaya.
DEE: [Chuckles] Exactly.
ANNIE: Okay, also, wasn’t everyone so cute, Jeff? Don’t you just love everybody?
JEFF: Okay, the tanuki… I wish they were in tanuki form more, because they are very cute.
DEE: They’re adorable as tanuki.
ANNIE: I love them all! Who’s your favorite of the brothers?
JEFF: In tanuki form or in general as characters?
ANNIE: Oh, let’s go with tanuki form.
[Chuckling]
JEFF: I don’t really remember the differences in their tanuki forms.
ANNIE: Wow! Okay, fine. In general, then! Why would you ask?
JEFF: Actually, no, I think Yaichiro actually, because he still has his absurd anime hair but as a tanuki.
ANNIE: [crosstalk] His hairstyle, yeah!
JEFF: It’s so cute.
DEE: He does! That is adorable.
ANNIE: In both forms? As tanuki and overall, Yaichiro is your favorite?
JEFF: Hm, I think as an overall character I liked Yajiro the best, because I really like his position as a frog in a well. First of all, I really like the flavor text of that, just the… So, apparently it’s based on a saying of… I think the saying is like “A frog in a well can’t see the ocean in front of him” or something?
DEE: It’s “A frog in the well knows nothing of the sea.” So it’s the idea that you’re limited by your surroundings and you don’t know what you don’t know, basically.
JEFF: Mm-hm. So, I just love the flavor of everyone referring to him, “Oh, he’s just a frog in a well,” and that’s a thing in this world that’s like “Oh, yeah. A frog in a well. Obviously, a frog in a well.” But I just felt like it was such an interesting… not quite arc, but basically his self-exile into the well because of his guilt over… he thought that he let his father die.
DEE: [sad] I know.
JEFF: That felt really resonant. And then just being stuck as a frog and having to struggle with what he can or can’t do because he’s stuck as a frog. Like the moment when Yashiro pours the alcohol down the well and he transforms into the train, just directly from frog to train inside of…
[Laughter]
DEE: I love the idea that frog is now his base form because he was a frog for so long, so he actually has to focus on becoming a tanuki. And yeah, it ends up being kind of a nice little metaphor for grief and depression. You know, it’s a gradual process, he needs some medicine to help with it along the way, he’s slowly able to start seeing his family again, and then he decides to go off and see the world.
Yeah, I really like Yajiro’s story as well. He’s probably, lowkey, my favorite, although I definitely vibe hard with Yashiro’s terrible, terrible anxiety about wanting to make the family proud!
[Laughter]
DEE: He’s such a high-strung mess.
ANNIE: I love all of them! They were all so good. And when they were in the floating teahouse and everyone else is like, “It’s war!” and he’s like, “Guys! Please! We can’t do this!” and then his mom’s like, “We’re doing it, son,” and I was like…
[Chuckling]
ANNIE: I was like, “I love him.” I think I would have been him in that situation, like “Guys, we can’t shoot things at someone else!” Like, crying and everyone’s loading up the cannon.
JEFF: I’m a little bummed that Yajiro… I thought when he got on the train and left, it was so sad and resonant with me. I was kind of bummed that it kind of was ultimately for the plot convenience of looping back around and finding the real Kureiichiro. I kind of wish that he actually just stayed away, but maybe he’s gonna keep traveling and stuff, so…
DEE: Yeah, I get the sense he… Well, he said he wanted to go back to Shikoku, so I get the sense he’s gonna go on another journey at some point. So, hopefully the frog in the well will get to see more of the sea as he goes forward. He’s adorable.
How did you guys feel about…? Since we’re talking about all the good tanuki, how do you like the tanuki girls, Gyokuran and Kaisei? Jeff, I know you said you had some issues with how the show treats its female characters, but I love both of them. How about you guys?
JEFF: Oh, yeah, I think both of them are fantastic.
ANNIE: Kaisei, I adored from the get-go. It was also very relatable because I have brothers, too, and she was just throwing things at them and she’s like, “My idiot brothers!” and then Yasaburo would be like, “Yeah, they suck.” She’s like, “How dare you?”
DEE: [Laughs] “Only I get to say that!”
ANNIE: “How dare you call my brothers…?” I was like, “Wow, that’s mood.”
[Chuckling]
ANNIE: Absolutely in love with her. And, ah, I did— Okay, so I cried a lot watching this show, too, even on the rewatch, when she is sad that when Yasaburo sees her, he can’t hold his transformation. I was crying because she went through all this effort this whole time. That was all for him. I was like, “Ah, she’s too good! She’s too good for him, honestly.”
JEFF: I hadn’t thought of it that way. Hm. I thought it was really cute the whole time how she… it’s kind of perfect tsundere attitude, following him along but never letting him see her.
ANNIE: Letting him know she’s there? Yeah.
DEE: And I remember in season 1 feeling like, oh, Kaisei’s kind of a tsundere and it’s gonna turn out that the reason she… she’s just too shy to see him, is kind of the way everybody plays it off. And then in season 2, you find out that she was doing it to kind of keep him safe because if his transformation exploded in the middle of the street, that would be a huge problem.
So, yeah, I like… Morimi does— The author of the stories, the way he writes women is interesting? I’m not gonna say it’s—
ANNIE: Yeah, good word. [Chuckles]
DEE: I don’t want to say “good,” because I think there’s definitely some stuff you could criticize in some of his other works. So, he did Tatami Galaxy and The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl and Penguin Highway. And I think he’s kind of up and down. But I do think that he sometimes tries to play with the archetypes and take them in some interesting directions.
And so, I like the way Kaisei ends up being sort of the unsung hero of these first two books—first two seasons, since we’re talking about the anime—in terms of how she’s kind of constantly in the background helping to make sure that things go well. Yeah, I think she’s a really fun character.
And I like that by the end of season 2, she and Yasaburo have both kind of acknowledged that they are both very stubborn, headstrong trickster types, but they figured out ways to work together and they kind of like that about each other. So, by the end of season 2, I’m kind of into their relationship. I think they’ll match up well, going forward.
JEFF: I was sold on their relationship as soon as they had the onsen scene where they were just talking over the wall and she was throwing stuff at him, and I was like…
DEE: Chucking fruit at him.
JEFF: Yeah. I was like, oh no, they’re kind of perfect. Oh no!
DEE: They kind of are. I think Yasaburo does sort of need somebody who’s willing to go on adventures but will also call him out on his crap. And so, I think Kaisei’s kind of perfect in that regard. And yeah, she’s a very fun character.
JEFF: Yeah, my thing about female characters like Kaisei, Tousen, Gyokuran… I like all of them—and Benten—
ANNIE: Thank you.
JEFF: —but what I don’t like is how normalized the ogling of them by men and especially older men.
ANNIE: God, men are disgusting. We should… [Chuckles]
JEFF: All of the… There’s so many… There’s Kaisei being… [Sighs] I guess when I’m saying I love Yajiro, I forgot that one of his whole predicaments is that he has a crush on Kaisei and that’s why he wants to leave, and I do not like that at all. And I also don’t like how once he goes to Shikoku and he gets a love interest there that’s also another young child.
DEE: Well, I don’t think they’re that… So, here’s the problem with the age thing: I have no idea how old any of these tanuki are, because they’re tanuki! They’re raccoon dogs! So, I’ve decided to just… Like, I agree, in human form she looks very young. In tanuki form she’s not small like Yashiro is; she looks like a full-grown tanuki. So, I have decided to just assume that that is just the form she likes to take, is a short girl.
But no, I get what you’re saying about some age-gap issues, but I don’t know how to approach it because, again, they’re tanuki. I don’t know what to do with that.
ANNIE: I think a lot of it’s that whole… It’s a similar issue to the anime that’s like a little girl who talks like a little girl, looks like a little girl, but “I’m a thousand years old actually!” and it’s kind of a similar aesthetic. But I don’t know!
Also, now that I looked at who the writer is and you mentioned The Night Is Short, Walk On Girl, which… Okay, everyone hates this, but I hated that. [Chuckles]
JEFF: Oh!
ANNIE: I hated it because… that guy who was obsessed with her the whole time, she ends up going to him in the end and taking care of him because he’s sick, and I hated that and I never wanted to see that again. And also, the men in that were gross! And I’m like, oh, it does make sense that the men in this are gross because…
DEE: So, I also had some… We probably shouldn’t spend too much time talking about Morimi’s other works because this is not a, you know, podcast for those other shows.
ANNIE: Yeah.
DEE: Sorry. Sorry!
ANNIE: No, it’s fine!
DEE: I brought it up, so that’s on me.
ANNIE: No. Tangents are fine.
DEE: The one thing I do kind of like about both The Tatami Galaxy and The Night Is Short, because they kind of exist in the same universe, is they’re both kind of stories about these guys who put these women on pedestals and become kind of obsessed with them, and at the end of the day, the narrative tells them, “Stop doing that. She’s a person. Just ask her on a date if you like her.” And so, I do kind of appreciate that in some ways I think Morimi’s work kind of tries to break down that idea of “the unattainable mysterious lady,” but I think he leans into a lot of stuff I don’t care for along the way sometimes.
Eccentric Family is by far my favorite of his works that have been adapted into anime because I think it takes a slightly different approach than his other stories do. But yeah, it makes his female characters both interesting and kind of frustrating because a lot of the time they end up just sort of being vehicles for the guy’s growth, which is unfortunate because they’re all really cool ladies along the way!
JEFF: Yeah. All of these characters, I was kind of sad to think about… I was thinking about whether they interact with each other. And I was like, “Wait, no, kind of,” because Kaisei kind of only exists for Yasaburo’s story. Gyokuran kind of only exists for Yaichiro’s story. Tousen, I guess, interacts with lots of people, but they all do kind of feel like they’re in these little boxes, which is sad.
DEE: Yeah. There’s some implication… Just based on some of the things that Gyokuran says, there’s implication that Gyokuran and Kaisei know each other outside of their relationship to the Shimogamo boys and get along well, but we never see it. So, I agree with you that I think more scenes with the girls just hanging out would be really cool, because I love both Kaisei and Gyokuran.
The other thing I love is Gyokuran and Yaichiro’s little love story, because I love that Yaichiro got angry at Gyokuran for losing on purpose.
ANNIE: I did like that.
DEE: Because you see that so often in fiction where it’s like the guy doesn’t like the tough girl who’s better than he is, and so, “Oh, well, you should lose on purpose so he won’t feel threatened.” I think that’s a thing a lot of girls have heard growing up. And so I love that Eccentric Family is like, “No! You beat his ass! And if he doesn’t like it, then he’s not worthy of you!”
And Yaichiro doesn’t care! He’s into it! He loves that Gyokuran is really good at shogi. And so, I think their relationship… Also, the fact that they both turn into tigers when they get mad is very funny.
JEFF: Oh, it’s so cute.
DEE: I know!
ANNIE: I’m obsessed with them! They’re so cute! But I did love that moment because it is a really common thing for the girls to just let the guy win a lot of times, and for him to directly call it out and be like, “No, I like that you’re great at this, and you should never let anyone else beat you.” And I was like, “Do I love this man? Yeah.”
DEE: I know! Yaichiro earned a lot of points for me at that moment. I was like, “O