How different is the countryside? When anime are set in rural towns, we often see a variety of recurring themes such as a communal knowledge of everyone else, a lack of modern technology and particularly internet service, and most of all the internal conflict of younger people feeling somewhat stifled by the way in which their microcosm of society is closed off from the rest of youth society, from fashion to music and beyond. Kuma Miko, centered around Machi the fourteen-year-old miko of Kumade Village, takes this almost caricaturized portrayal of the countryside a step further: not only is the patron deity she performs rituals with a bear, but he’s a friendly talking bear who cooks, cleans, and chats in plain Japanese while standing on two legs like a normal human. Natsu and Machi grew up together their whole lives, and despite the obvious reversal in size from their earlier years they still continue to relax and play together as peers.
Where we pop in on their ordinary story of killing time in the forest right outside Kumade Village is when Machi first begins to get the itch to travel beyond their small world and see the vast urban landscape of the current age, a suggestion that Natsu resists with all his might. It feels a bit ironic for him to be quizzing Machi and assigning her trials to test her knowledge of current trends when he is a bear, both her age and every bit as secluded as she is, without any possibility of blending into youth culture, but perhaps between the height difference and his gruffer voice he comes off as enough of a father figure to sell this dynamic. Of course Machi fails in spectacular fashion, taking the parody of the classless country bumpkin to an almost offensive extreme, although as a young nervous girl maybe it feels more like a lack of experience than an insult to all country folk—that’s what the other townspeople are for, after all.
However our interaction with the rest of Kumade Village is actually fairly limited aside from when the older folk gather for rituals held by Machi and Natsu for the harvest’s prosperity and the like. Our other real contacts are Machi’s older cousin Yoshio, who works at the village municipal office trying to find ways to revitalize the tourist industry, and his childhood friend Hibiki, whose character closely follows the current trend of misunderstood yankee women with lots of piercings and blond hair. Yoshio’s unfortunate role in Kuma Miko is to enthusiastically dress Machi up in various costumes, all of which are distastefully skimpy and objectifying, and to sign her up for jobs and idol contests against her will. In that sense Hibiki as the straight (wo)man can’t come frequently enough, serving mostly as a limiter to Yoshio’s antics while also giving Machi a sort of “young” role model to look up to for fashion. Yet they underplay this aspect as both Machi’s desire to venture out into the city and Hibiki’s role as a character fade towards the middle of the show, giving Yoshio free reign to inflict his will upon Machi to comedic effect, with Natsu constantly in the background being swayed by his perseverance.
The centerpiece of the show is of course the interplay between Machi and Natsu as they lead their domestic life punctuated by Yoshio’s whimsies, Machi’s desire for something new, and their regular religious duties at the center of Kumade Village’s operation. There are some scenes or episodes where the two of them are simply making miso soup, or dealing with being ill, or even just practicing for future rituals on a mock stage in the woods accompanied to a boombox, and these scenes really give a sense of the isolation and otherworldliness of the countryside, of their predetermined lives and trajectories. In other scenes we see the elders chatting about the village, about their beliefs and the realities of rural life, and these moments speak to the experience of a Japanese farming village to a very accurate degree, so as Machi and Natsu listen closely to their stories and contemplate them together we get a sense of sympathy with these two, always learning even after having lived there for decades.
But the more frequent scenes—scenes of dressing Machi up as a village mascot or idol, or filming commercials of the village featuring her, or recruiting her to work at the local grocery store as she stands their nervously stammering her lines out with whatever breath she can muster—are almost uncomfortably cruel. Yoshio’s personality actually is amusing in and of itself, being completely absorbed with excitement and a sense of purpose at all times, but the end result feels perhaps too manipulative to a fourteen year old girl with the maturity of a twelve year old, the voice of a ten year old, and the body of a nine year old. Even the scenes where she is learning about the modern world can feel similarly discomforting as she goes on a clear anxiety kick just standing in the entrance to a bookstore.
It’s easier to get a kick out of her realizing all the kids half her age have cell phones, a ubiquitous experience of people this generation, or seeing her try to use the rice cooker only to have the house catch fire in a short and quite believable series of accidents. They even put the shoe on the other foot once in a while; one scene has Machi guiding a boy down into a cave where he is locked in with Natsu as punishment for stealing a bike, and sure enough the boy pisses himself silly, not knowing that Natsu is less a carnal animal than a sophisticated and harmless product of the modern age, who just happens to have claws and pointy teeth. By contrast, at the end of the show he winds up in a crowded city only to be mistaken by the surrounding urbanites for a man in a costume. Were it not for this scene appearing in a longer arc about Machi discovering her inner peace back in the countryside and ultimately deciding to remain there for the sake of not having to grow up in some sense, this would have been a much better joke. Alas, the episodes framing it are clearly playing to a more tried and true formula of rejecting the complexities of modern life with Machi’s crushing social anxiety as the centerpiece, and for all the relaxing moments and innovative gags about the countryside this last-minute moral sucker punch leaves me feeling a bit jaded about the whole affair.