Never before have I seen better proof that a drama can end with virtually no time passing, with almost no objective change in the world whatsoever, and still evoke a profound sense of having seen the characters on screen grow and mature. If you laid the opening and ending scenes of The Eccentric Family next to each other prior to watching the show it would be impossible to guess which was which. The only noticeable difference is how many of the characters show up in the same shot. And that is absolutely the most important detail to understand the change that happens over the course of this 13-episode roller coaster through the streets of Kyoto, because for as little objective change as there is, a simple shot of a family bickering out by a temple at New Years is enough to show the difference. Yes, beneath the surface things do change. And rarely has it been so much fun.
Kyoto has been rendered and explored to a realism rivaled only by a few shows, with rigid shots of street signs, subway stations, shopping districts, the Kamogawa river, and countless other locations that immediately jump out at anyone who has visited this iconic city. The most notable location is the Shimogamo shrine, where the Shimogamo tanuki family lives. Having lost their father—the head of the tanuki political world and an incorrigible idiot—who became the main dish at a human year end hot pot party, the four sons of the Shimogamo family live up to their father’s name in the truest sense possible, namely by being idiots. We follow the third son Yasaburou, who has a penchant for transforming into a schoolgirl, getting drunk, and watching the world fly by. As he remarks early on, “humans live in the city, tanuki crawl the earth, and tengu fly through the air. Since the city’s establishment they have maintained a delicate balance that keeps the great wheel of this city turning round and round. And watching that wheel spin is more fun than anything else.”
If Yasaburou is the tanuki in the wheel of Kyoto, then from the tengu side is Nyoigatake Akadama, Yasaburou’s beloved teacher. Teacher of what exactly, we never learn. If anything, Yasaburou is keeping Akadama’s life in order, constantly cleaning and running errands for the irritable old man. Make no mistake: Akadama is truly an irritable old man. He derails life for all the other characters to suit his own personal whims, and never once admits any sort of affection for Yasaburou. Yet the two of them share a tacit understanding and respect that crosses the barrier of their race, an unspoken barrier that keeps any other human or tengu from coming close to any tanuki we meet. Akadama was the father that Yasaburou barely ever had, and Yasaburou makes Akadama’s life possible in the years past his prime, as the former leader of the largest tengu clan in Kyoto now drinks port wine all day in an unheated apartment. Even if his actions would otherwise relegate him to a side character role, this relationship is truly at the heart of the show’s balance between rigid social structure and familial love.
The last cog in the wheel, a human named Suzuki Satomi, is where emotions get truly complicated. Picked up off a beach as a youth by Akadama on a whim one day, she was raised as a tengu and inherited both Akadama’s power of flight and his incredible ego. The difference between them is her ability to back her ego up. Satomi is the most feared human in Kyoto by both tanuki and tengu, who both otherwise claim to hold no mere human in esteem, and she more commonly goes by the name Benten due to her involvement with an exclusive club of seven named after the Seven Lucky Gods of Japan. This club holds a party at the end of every year where they make a tanuki hot pot as per tradition. If you made the connection with my earlier paragraph then you probably have realized that she indeed killed and ate Yasaburou’s father. Opening scenes between Benten and Yasaburou feel cordial, almost friendly, but as this fact comes to light we see an edge in Yasaburou’s attitude, a note of superiority in Benten’s speech, and suddenly their playful and masterfully written interactions become chilling, disturbed. As Akadama gets older and begins to physically desire Benten, watching Yasaburou heed his teacher’s wishes while curbing his inner resentment for her, while not at all dramatized, is mortifying.
But the hardest interactions to watch are within the Shimogamo family itself, where the four brothers are flung between various places in life and share a bond that resembles work acquaintances more than family. The oldest brother Yaichirou is working to lead the tanuki world as their father did; the youngest brother Yashirou works in a factory run by the despicable Ebisugawa family and the two idiot brothers Ginkaku and Kinkaku. The second son Yajirou sits all day at the bottom of the well as a frog, never having figured out how to transform back into a tanuki. They all speak frequently, and their speech denotes familial closeness. But their words betray the fact that none of them understands each other despite their father’s same idiot blood running equally through all their veins. Their mother loves them unconditionally and wholeheartedly, and while she scolds their idiocy at times she is clearly the emotional center that glues all four brothers together, even now that their father has long since passed on.
So where can this all lead? A series of chance meetings, festivals, and dinners, an election to determine the next head of the tanuki society, and the same everyday routines reaching their breaking point all come together and catalyze the lives of the characters, and while as an audience we are drawn to the fireworks and hilarity that transpires, even the comedy of it all slowly forces the four brothers to truly understand the way of life they have chosen, as well as the way of life their three brothers chose for themselves. The Eccentric Family truly sidesteps the issue of melodrama, and while the characters cry in the face of harsh truths, they do so in a way that forces the audience not to cry, but to understand why the characters have nothing else to do. Set to Yasaburou’s dry internal narration, we get a glimpse of how they rationalize and objectify the absurdity of their lives, and slowly we see them change in their thinking. They all received an entirely different piece of the legendary tanuki that was their father, and only when they come together as brothers can those missing pieces seep into their lives.
And The Eccentric Family is undoubtably meant to be happy, light, and funny, with the end growth of the brothers justifying their moments of sadness of introspection by giving them the security of a lasting enjoyment of life. The light color palate and distinctively sharp visual design make every scene feel engaging and lively, even in the dead of night. The Kyoto we see is an endless party, and every new location hides fantastic secrets. One of my favorite scenes had Benten and Yasaburou wandering on the rooftops of the Kyoto shopping district in the dead of night, and eventually they come upon a table and chairs, where Benten pulls a cord to a higher rooftop from which two martinis are lowered down. They sit in absolute isolation, illuminated by the moonlight and sip their drinks to the unobstructed view of Kyoto’s nightscape. It’s a truly magical moment, and for a second the characters and their lives slip away as we linger with them on that hidden rooftop bar.
Another scene that has stayed with me is during the iconic Gozan festival, where the tanuki all find various ways to fly into the sky and watch Kyoto’s mountains set ablaze while enjoying a drink and a meal with their family. The Shimogamo family packs into a floating teahouse and wander about in their own corners, looking out on the festival and occasionally taking a drink. Eventually the rich Ebisugawa family drift by in a giant floating pirate ship, firing fireworks into the night sky to celebrate the festival, as well as to hit and crash the Shimogamo teahouse into the forest below. Yasaburou and his mother respond in kind with their own giant firework launcher, dragged out from a shelf in the corner. Yaichirou begs and pleads for their patience for the sake of their societal appearance, something he will eventually dismantle by himself for the whole tanuki world to see. Heedless, they launch the firework and it explodes spectacularly across the bow, a visual marvel that plays over and over again in my head. And they take a picture as a family to commemorate the incident, the mother and three of the four brothers all packed into one frame. That scene was one of the funniest scenes in any anime I have ever watched. That photo was when I truly realized how much I wanted to see the family all together by the end, if only to see how much more havoc all five of them together could do.