Dawnleaf Watches The Eccentric Family: Episode 1 – Crossdressing Tanuki and Flying Women

When you see it, you’ll shit bricks. 

Flying purple-haired woman!

If you’ve read my preview post, you’ve heard me singing praises for The Tatami Galaxy.  And, I would like to say, you can tell that the same guy wrote this.  In other words, the writing is really good.

Today's anime takes place in a world full of humans, tanuki, and tengu.  For those of you who don’t know what tanuki are, they’re cute little raccoon dogs who can shapeshift into weird stuff and are officially the most awesome things ever.  I’d probably watch a full thirteen episode fanservice show if it had tanuki in it (in fact, I have: Otome Youkai Zakuro’s the name).  And tengu are… well, they can fly and stuff. 

And humans…  Well, they’re just boring.  Humans in this world really seem to have gotten the short straw, as both tengu and tanuki can take human forms, but they additionally have the abilities to fly and shapeshift, respectively.

I can’t really nail a solid plot, as this story’s definitely character-based rather than plot-based.  Good thing that the characters are interesting and the dialogue’s well-written and entertaining.

Meet (who I assume is) our main character.  He (yes, he) is a tanuki who has decided to take the form of a high school girl to screw with the heads of people and to ‘add some flavor to his master’s life’.  What is it with this season and supposed crossdressing?

Here’s his master, a crotchety old man who’s a tengu, but hurt his back and now barely ever leaves his house and can’t fly anymore.

I’m going to have to work that line into a conversation somewhere in the future.  I’m not quite sure when, but it’s definitely going to happen.

And here’s Benten, whose name I can remember because it’s the name of a western TV series, who’s a human woman but can fly?  I bet she’s someone’s illegitimate half-breed child.  I’m calling it!  She’s also kind of awesome in my book, because she comes across as cool and intelligent.

This show had several moments that made me laugh out loud, but they weren’t really jokes, perse.  Sort of like that other anime by the same guy, just the situations and dialogue were good enough to make me laugh.

I wonder what the other people at the bar were thinking at that apparently lesbian kiss.  Does it count if one of them is a dude who’s shapeshifted into a girl?  Why do tanuki even have the concepts of gender if they can switch them at will?

Anyway, one of the other good things about the writing here is that, even after a short time, you feel like you already really getting to know how these characters live and you care for them, even though they haven’t been shoving exposition down your throat.  There’s plenty of room to learn more, trust me.

And the animation is P.A. Works, and they’re doing a really nice job here.  The backgrounds are beautiful, the lighting can be rather atmospheric at times, and I noticed no animation flaws or extended still frames.  The music’s good, too.

And, honestly, how many anime have you seen that includes a high-school-girl-who’s-actually-a-boy shooting an arrow with a love letter attached to it at a woman-with-purple-hair-who-can-fly across a river?