Tolstoy's quote could have been written about the Shimogamo family (and their close acquaintances.) Uchouten Kazoku's focus is relationships - between the brothers and their mother; between the Simogamo and their Ebisugawa cousins; between Yasaburo and his teacher; and between the different factions of intelligent beings living in Kyoto.
It was thought provoking, bitter sweet, funny and strange.
It has a bit of a surreal quality about it. The character of Benten can fly and use other Tengu magic despite being human, but no one seems to find this strange. The tanuki are weirdly placid about the idea of being eaten. The humans in the story are also strangely unaffected by the idea of eating a fellow sophont. These things together combine to remind us, sometimes subtly and sometimes not-so-subtly, that the world of the story is not our usual world.
The writers tackled the problem of evoking sympathy for an alien intelligence in a unique way. The tanuki are drawn mostly as "normal" people, making them easy to identify with for the viewer. By contrast, humanity comes across as strange and capricious, impossible to understand. It was enjoyably different.
