Kiitarou Shounen no Youkai Enikki

The title of this series of anime shorts speaks for itself – it’s a show about a boy named Kiitaro, and the memories that he makes meeting lots of different Youkai. The first episode of the show has a slightly different feel, but the other episodes all involve Kiitaro meeting some Youkai and having interactions with them which reveal something about their nature.

The show is light-hearted and comic in tone, with Kiitaro ending up in some silly situations either from misunderstanding the youkai, from the actions of the youkai themselves, or his main companion the Zashiki Warashi Suzu.

I will say that there’s a surprising amount ... of somewhat sexual humour in the series, with repeated upskirt jokes and things of a similar nature. To me it didn’t feel like it added anything to the story or my understanding of the youkai. It felt rather out of place in what was otherwise a very light and cute series.

The episodes have a short section at the end actually talking about the youkai and what they’re like in folklore. This was interesting to me as a short primer, as while I’m aware of youkai as a general concept, I’m not familiar with many specific kinds of youkai, so finding out a little about them was interesting! Obviously a 10-15 second segment can’t give you a lot of information, but it does give me enough so that I can find out a bit more.

The visuals are of a high quality for a short series (it’s certainly not a show which looks like it was animated in Flash), with detailed backgrounds and colourful character designs. There’s no dynamic action sequences and the characters movements are kept pretty simple, but I was surprised with how good it looked in comparison to other shorts, even if it would be pretty standard for a full-length series. The ED is animated in a style which is reminiscent of traditional Japanese painting, which seemed apposite for a show about what could be called traditional Japanese spirits.

There’s numerous different ending themes played throughout the series. None of them really stood out to me strongly enough to form an attachment to them, but it was interesting hearing different tunes to the same visuals each episode. The soundtrack mostly features some traditional Japanese music which suited the theme of the show.

Overall, I found this series to be charming and generally funny. I’m definitely glad I checked it out! You may like watching it if you’re interested in knowing a little about youkai.

I feel that I should write a review that can do this short anime some justice. People is not giving it much appreciation!

Story: 5/10
I can give a 5 at most since there is not much a of story behind this short anime.
Its about a boy called Kitarou with supernatural senses, who gets kicked out of his household and suddenly wanders off and becomes the master of a youkai home. The show features his daily encounters with different youkais and his interactions with them.I strongly believe that the story could have been more strongly improved with some good twist here and there but sadly its ... just meant to be a feel good comedy show which becomes the main weakness for this show.

Art: 7/10
What I can give credit to this show is that the animation was pretty well done for just a short 4 mins anime. This was the main drive for me to actually finish this anime. I really loved the art style and in a way, I could see that there was earnest effort by the animators and producers in trying to give some ambiance and life to the anime.

Sound:6/10
The anime only has ending themes but it varies throughout the 12 episodes run. About 4 or 5 were used i think? I liked the variation to the songs, there were quite catchy in a way but still it sounded a bit too electronic so It was just decent for me. The background music for anime was okay, nothing special as well.

Character: 6/10
All the characters in the show are somehow the usual cast of a slice of life show. You have the tsundere chracters, moe ones, abusive ones , pervy ones. Lets just say they are pretty generic but for me they were fine since It was just 4 minutes and seeing some funny and wacky interactions between main character kitarou and his youkai companions such as a cute zashiki warashi, a kitsune( fox), a yuki onna. For me it was pretty peaceful to watch their fun interactions even for a just a few minutes.

Summing Up:
Overall, this anime gets a 6/10 for me. I feel that if the anime had a longer run time, some very interesting story could have been churned out for it but sadly that was not the case. But nevertheless, I found it to be a rather fine watch, nothing special, nothing to hate about it as well.The best thing about it is the great art style which makes the show quite watchable. So if u have time to spare, this anime can certainly fill up some of it. 48 mins at most spent on this anime, u can minus 10 to 12 minutes if u want to skip the ending song, well thats just a good 36 minutes to finish this short anime.
Thats it for my appreciation of this anime! Ta Ta!