(12 episodes)
What’s it about ?
Slice-of-life story about a young shrine-maiden-to-be, and the fox spirit living in the shrine.
Characters
Makoto, our high-school heroine. She’s been the heir to the shrine since she was 4, when her mother met an untimely death. She’s nice, but a bit awkward ; her willingness to help anyone she’s just met also means she has a hard time not being always late.
Gintarou, the fox spirit, has lived in the shrine for generations ; but while the 14 previous shrine maidens worshipped and feared him, Makoto has grown up to view him as a friend. There are often tensions, especially when she abuses his divination powers for the littlest cause, but they always make up in the end.
For the record, he’s not the shrine’s god ; he works as an intermediary with them. Also, this is a role that’s usually performed by pairs of spirits ; his partner left a while ago, which is bound to be a plot point later on.
Makoto’s father married into the family, so while he’s the current priest, he can’t see Gintarou. But he loves and trusts his daughter, even if he’s often powerless to help her handle her gift and responsibilities.
Ikegami is a classmate of Makoto’s who latches on her divination “powers” to fix her relationship with her boyfriend. While she’s not quite happy with the initial results, in the end it all works out.
Production Values
Quite nice ; Gintarou’s body language is animated with lots of care. It’s a very pleasant-looking show.
Overall Impression
A nice, relaxed fantasy slice-of-life show that’s very pleasant to watch. It’s not doing much of interest yet (the core plot for this episode involves finding a lost cat), but we’re obviously still in the setup stage, and there are many threads introduced here that sound intriguing.
This one definitely deserves some more attention.
