Pachi's Anime Review: The Eccentric Family

For thousands of years, tanuki, tengu, and humans have lived together in Kyoto complacently and occasionally at odds. The most recent Nise-emon (the elected leader of the local tanuki society) was tragically boiled in a hot pot on New Years' and eaten by a rowdy gathering of humans known as the Friday Fellows.  Nise-emon Souichiro Shimogamo left behind a wife and four children, who continue to live their interesting lives to the fullest in their father's memory as yet another manifestation of the Shimogamo family's self-professed idiot blood.

"BE INTERESTING!" -- that's the mantra of The Eccentric Family. If you're not living it up, taking advantage of your heritage and what you are, you're not living at all. Welcome to Kyoto, where humans and two specific mythical creatures coexist in temperance. You've got the haughty tengu and the humble tanuki, who are able to live amongst the humans disguised thanks to their magical properties. On a leisurely stroll through the streets of Kyoto, you might not notice anything out of the ordinary, but as The Eccentric Family allows us to see, behind the scenes there's all kinds of uproars about from the magical creature community. Some say they've seen a boy dressed in girl's clothing. Some will tell you there's a frog at the bottom of a well who sits and listens to your troubles, if you choose to speak to it. Others still say they've witnessed sudden gusts of wind and thunder roll in on a previously sunny day and then just as quickly disappear! When it comes to tanuki and tengu, life is anything but ordinary.

A pure-bred slice-of-life tale of family and heritage, Eccentric Family is a breath of fresh air in our current anime world. When you picture "slice-of-life", 20-something different schoolgirl anime come to mind, don't they? These days, the definition of "slice-of-life" has been tempered to mean "people doing random shit".  I've held a tirade against this preconception for some time now; "doing random shit" is not the same as "living your life". Simply, people tack "slice-of-life" to a title if it does not have an overarching plot, which again, is a false preconception. Flowers of Evil was a slice-of-life;  a considerably dark one at that; because it followed the actions of an individual's daily life without the pretense of sketch gag comedy or dramatic set pieces.  Eccentric Family is a clean entry into the genre in its own way; presenting a magical world through a grounded lens that examines one's role in society and living on in the spirit of those who came before you.

 

What grabs you instantly about Eccentric Family are the memorable characters and their depth beyond the screen. The Shimogamo's are the focus - a tanuki family (and the titular eccentric family) with well-known prestige of a late sire previously elected as the head of all Kyoto-dwelling tanuki, the Nise-emon. Through a late-night tryst of misfortune, Souichiro Shimogamo was boiled in a hot pot by the Friday Fellows, leaving behind his wife and four children: Yaichiro, Yajiro, Yasaburo, and Yashiro. Yaichiro, the eldest brother, is frenetic and puts on airs to be the proudest and proper tanuki he can be in his father's memory. As the eldest, he is the next in line to be considered for the role of Nise-emon, and as such greatly considers his appearance to his tanuki peers. Yajiro, the second eldest, is a loner and unmotivated. His father's death hit him the hardest, and unable to cope with the loss, he hid himself away in the form of a frog. In fact, he's spent so long in that form that he's forgotten how to change back, and opts to live out his days at the bottom of a well, listening to the troubles of passerby to circumvent the pain of having to examine his own. Yasasburo is our protagonist for this story. He's reckless and aloof, fully aware that he contracts his idiocy from his late father and embraces it for his own lifestyle. His adage to living is that as long as he keeps things moving and interesting, life is never a bore. Then the youngest, Yashiro, a timid Shimogamo who gets scared easily and tends to lose his human transformation as a result. He's made a punching bag by others in the tanuki community, prompting Yaichiro or Yasaburo to come to his aid on regular occasions. The brothers are all instantly relatable - the strict, the apathetic, the wild, and the meek - without being characters defined solely by their base mood. They're also believable as siblings - not always around, not always showing affection for one another, but lending a shoulder when the time is right. They're independent spirits but eternally bound as a family.

Yasaburo makes the daily rounds through Kyoto using his transformations for fun and mischief; running across friends and enemies alike in and out of the tanuki community.  Whether he's butting heads with the antagonistic Ebisugawa tanuki family or looking after the cranky brandy-loving old tengu Akadama, he works at living his life wild and free. Through the old man, Yasaburo is "friends" with the lovely and illusive Benten, a human whom Akadama fancies in his elderly perversions and whom he taught to fly. Benten is a an unexplainable wild card in Yasaburo's life who puts him and everyone around him on edge. She cavorts with humans, tengu, and tanuki alike, being one of the few humans aware how close to humans these creatures actually populate; thus making her a potential danger. Her presence is so alluring and threatening that many tanuki find themselves unable to hold a transformation in her presence; a fear that stems from her known membership of the tanuki-eating Friday Fellows, and one of those present during the boiling of the last Nise-emon. She is often unable to deny her love of tanuki and desire to eat Yasaburo herself. "I like you so much I want to gobble you up," she'll say, quite literally. 

The desire to eat one's friend is not, surprisingly, met with harshness, but rather accepted as a fact of life. This is one of the fascinating, if not alien, aspects of Eccentric Family - the acceptance of tragedies in life as just one part of a revolving circle one cannot tamper with. Sometimes tanuki get boiled in a hot pot. Benten does not express a craving to devour Yasaburo following plans to kidnap him and do the deed herself;  but because she knows this is a thing that just happens, it might one day happen to Yasaburo. To eat one you love out of equal parts obligation, desire, and bitter acceptance is a powerfully taxing weight; one that Benten expresses wholly when no-one is looking. Another examination of this comes from a fellow member of the Friday Fellows, Professor Yodogawa, whom Yasaburo becomes acquainted with. Unlike Benten, Yodogawa is not aware that Yasaburo is a tanuki, and thus openly shares all his philosophies on eating the critters whereas Benten prefers to be more subtle and coy to tease. As Yodogawa explains, he feels no shame in eating tanuki because as he sees it, when life swings in favor of one direction or the other, the right thing to do is take it in stride. By a similar token, he would be happy to be eaten by a tanuki, if it were possible, and so long as he tasted good. To him, to not cook and enjoy a tanuki to the fullest is an insult to that tanuki, and likewise to be eaten by a tanuki and not taste good would also be an insult. The show presents a puzzlingly adamant secular mantra on the merits and unfairness of the food chain that is admittedly hard to grasp, but fascinating to imagine. We normally picture a struggle for survival when faced with the prospect of being eaten, but Eccentric Family eases us back and softly tells us, "It's no big deal. Sometimes these things happen. The best course is for neither side to feel regret and make the most of it for the good of all." The same ideals are brought up on the issue of Nise-emon himself. Tanuki regularly talk about how Souichiro was boiled in a hot pot right in front of his family, as if the act were nothing but "a thing that happened". And despite the sadness they feel, the Shimogamo's also recognize it as "a thing that happened" and do their best to worry for their own lives and future. It raises the throngs of survival of the fittest into levels of human empathy, which would typically cause a mighty dramatic clash. It's all very strange, indeed, but a compelling twist on interpretations of empathy and regret that are welcome in this story.

The Eccentric Family has some great themes, but how does it look? P.A. Works is the studio to thank for this effort, and immediately you'll notice it looks nothing like their normal faire. P.A.Works is well known for gorgeously pervasive settings and backgrounds paired with (in my opinion) creepy doll-like character designs I've never been a fan of. Eccentric Family is yet another world that comes alive, but in a different way. The art style is very reserved and fluid in comparison to their previous works - it doesn't look like anything they've ever made before. The backgrounds are still beautifully designed, but in a way that allows for the characters to blend seamlessly with the world around them. This is most apparent in a scene near the end of the series in which the characters and the background flow so effortlessly it creates a magical moment not unlike the Ghibli charm of yesteryear.

I don't make the Ghibli connection just because this is a show about tanuki, but I really mean that the animation style and direction of the story-telling feels like it came from the hands of Hayao Miyazaki himself. There's a subtle charm and magic to the story that isn't overt so much to subvert the key themes of family and heritage, much like a classic Ghibli film. Not having read the novel the anime was adapted from, I can feel the heart and soul of that original tale, and that's the sign of a great work; where you don't even need to read the source material to feel like you've gotten a touch of the magic. And that's what The Eccentric Family was to me - a little touch of magic. It's a story with a resounding theme we can all relate to while at the same time putting a twist on the commonalities of life that make this world feel a bit distant from our own. Distant, but not out of arm's reach. That is how you make a magical, yet relatable world. You owe it to yourself to give The Eccentric Family a watch. It's a charming and uplifting slice-of-life that throws in just the slightest touch of the ol' magic for a captivating and deep viewing experience.
 

You can currently find all subbed episodes of The Eccentric Family streaming online courtesy of Crunchyroll. The series has not been licensed for release in the US as of time of this review.