Alternate titles: Uchouten Kazoku
Novel Adaptation by P.A. Works
Simulcast on Crunchyroll

Premise: Slice of life involving a family of tanuki and a family of tengu.

Iro’s Verdict: Beautiful, Leisurely, and Slow

This might be the best looking show this season. The simple animation mixes well with backgrounds that are almost certainly filtered photos, and the pastel colors lend an enjoyable softness to everything. The characters work well together and are interesting to watch, with Satomi being perhaps the first genuinely coquettish anime character I’ve seen in a long time, and there’s just enough mystery to imply important backstory events. The main problem here is that everything moves rather slowly – being interested in everything is kind of hard when you’re also on the verge of getting bored. I hope the pace can pick up just enough to keep me interested without putting me to sleep.

Gee’s Verdict: Charming

While the debut episode didn’t do much in the grand scheme of things, I was instantly won over by the amusing premise and the nice art direction. While Love Lab may be one of the surprise stars of the season with its oddly top-notch animation work, The Eccentric Family takes it for me in terms of the actual look of the show itself. The watercolor backgrounds combined with the colorful, yet subtly muted pastel look really sells it and does a great job of hiding the somewhat limited animation. While I’m not sure if this is going to have enough content and narrative to really draw me in, I’ll definitely give it the benefit of a few more episodes to win me over.

Aqua’s Verdict: Fabulous Max

I initially wanted to write down “has balls” as my verdict, because you know, Tanuki are known for having large tes– Never mind. It would fit The Eccentric Family, though, because it most definitely thrives on the originality that seems to be severely lacking in the mass of other shows starting this season. The Eccentric Family might not have the breathtaking animation of Free!, it makes up for it with some excellent use of colour, outstanding character designs and a very unique vibe. The directing manages to establish a plot in function of the characters and whatever they are doing when off-screen, rather than the other way around. These are not archetypes required to conform with certain genre conventions, but believable people. Well, very strange people, but still!

If anything, The Eccentric Family proves that a leisurely pace and well-crafted characters are not necessarily mutually exclusive. Our hero(ine) Yasaburo is a lazy, rude college graduate hipster who (ab)uses his shapeshifting powers to skip around town in the guise of a high school girl, and Benten serves as a very interesting foil, a fellow mythological being who seems to have lost all the youthful enthusiasm she showed in the flashback and now only wants to be human. The mythology aspect feels like an organic part of the characters rather than a forced schtick, but it does cause some confusion for those less familiar with Japanese folklore. It doesn’t help that Crunchyroll is not eager on helping you settle in. Then, however, The Eccentric Family throws the first funny breast-related joke in years at you, and you realize that it is more than worth the occasional trip to Wikipedia. Still don’t know what a Satomi Suzuki is, though.