The Fall 2016 Anime Preview Guide

Poco's Udon World

After his father passes away, 30-year-old Souta Tawara returns to his hometown to attend the funeral. The family udon restaurant is closed, but Souta finds a young child hiding inside. On his way to take the kid to the local police station, Souta runs into a priest who tells him the story of a shape-shifting tanuki that can take the form of a young human child. Souta doesn't think much of the priest's story until the child he's looking after suddenly sprouts furry ears and a tail. Poco's Udon World is based on a manga and can be found streaming on Crunchyroll, Saturdays at 3:00 PM EST.

Paul Jensen

Rating:

I swear, what is it with anime and hapless single guys taking care of adorable little kids? Last season it was Sweetness & Lightning, and now we've got Poco's Udon World. The theme of home-cooked meals returns to some extent, but now we've got a shape-shifting tanuki instead of a normal human kid. Sure, why not? Let's throw a little fantasy into the mix and see what happens. This first episode is pretty good at delivering that familiar feeling of warm fuzziness with a hint of sadness, so I suppose there's no reason it shouldn't work.

It takes a while for the supernatural twist to arrive, and up until then the formula is largely familiar. Souta's not overly charismatic as the main character, but his emotional state feels about right for his situation. He's a little bit numb from the whole experience, and this episode strikes a good balance between letting him feel at home in town and reminding us that he's been away for a while. When Poco (I presume that's tanuki-kid's name, or at least it will be) shows up, the dynamic between the two of them works rather well. Poco's initially cautious but opens up as soon as Souta displays a little kindness, while Souta has no idea what to do about this wild kid who just barged into his parents' old house. As an improvised family unit, they're charming enough.

I'm not yet sold on the tanuki part of the story, though. Apart from the admittedly surprising final scene, I'm not sure going down a fantasy route makes this episode any better than it would have been with a normal kid. I was much more interested in the more ordinary aspects of the story, like Souta's mixed feelings over his move to Tokyo and the steady stream of people coming to see if the restaurant had reopened. There's a potentially compelling story about Souta going back to his roots here, and I wonder if Poco's tanuki form might end up just being a distraction.

For now, anyone who enjoyed Sweetness & Lightning last season will probably find Poco's Udon World to be a suitable, if somewhat odd, replacement. It'll take a couple of weeks to figure out if this show's unique gimmick really works, but it's made a solid first impression. With some careful storytelling and a strong supporting cast, it could develop the kind of subtle fantasy vibe that made Flying Witch so enjoyable. Given that I've now compared it to two of the year's best slice of life shows, it must be off to a decent start.

Rebecca Silverman

Rating:

Clearly dads, adorable small children, and food are anime gold at this point, and Poco's Udon World is the spiritual successor to last season's Sweetness & Lightening…but with tanuki. Well, with a tanuki, and honestly, that really saves this from being both a little bit creepy and from feeling like a complete knock-off of the other, even if technically the manga of Poco began running a full year before Sweetness. Both shows do rely heavily on the aesthetics of nostalgia and young fathers feeding their children, however, so if you liked the one, there's a good chance the other will work for you too.

Of course, those similarities are largely on the surface. Poco's Udon World follows thirty-year- old Souta as he returns to his rural hometown following the death of his father, who ran an udon restaurant where he made everything, from stock to noodles, from scratch. Bullying in school made Souta reject the family business when he was younger, and it's clear that he's become detached from the whole thing – he's shocked when two separate people lament the closing of the restaurant. It's actually kind of annoying: Souta's a grown man, so if he doesn't want to take over the family business, that's his decision. But people, particularly the tourists he bumps into, are insistent that he needs to – that even if his udon isn't as good as his dad's it must still be amazing because clearly he learned udon at Daddy's knee. Even though we know that Souta's eventually going to reopen the restaurant, I would have preferred to see him do it solely because he wanted to regain a lost connection with his family history rather than because random strangers are giving him guilt trips. The episode does make it apparent that he does want to reconnect to the family he left behind, and the strange (tanuki) child he finds living in the restaurant upon his arrival obviously represents a chance to work out his regrets on that front, but the needling of strangers detracts from that message.

Fortunately the mythological aspect of the story stands to be very strong. The as-yet- unnamed child (presumably he's the eponymous Poco) seems like he could be a sort of zashiki-warashi, or house spirit, although his persistently rumbling tummy makes him feel more like the Russian domovoi or British brownie. His supernatural presence gives Souta the chance to work out his emotions towards his father and the family business, essentially giving him the opportunity for resolution that would otherwise be lost now that both of his parents are deceased. He's really what's got me interested to see more – how the fact that the child is a tanuki plays into the story and the mythological elements is more intriguing to me than Souta recalling his udon-soaked past, although to be fair, the episode makes that emotionally compelling as well, barring the issues I mentioned previously. That the tanuki is adorable helps, of course – if you're looking for your dose of cute, this show has got you covered.

Poco's Udon World may be the antidote to the darker emotional tones of March comes in like a lion. It still stands to have the weight of it, but tempered with supernatural elements and cuteness. As long as Souta turns out to have more agency in his choices and it doesn't get too wrapped up in the fact that tanuki are cute, this has a lot of potential to be sweet with just a hint of bitter.

Nick Creamer

Rating:

In some ways, Poco's Udon World is a victim of circumstance. Not only is the show's premise reasonably similar to last season's superior Sweetness & Lightning, it's also almost identical to the premise of 2014's far superior Barakamon. Given those immediate comparison points, it's a little hard for a show with inferior character writing, storytelling, and animation to gain much ground.

But ultimately, Poco's failings are all its own. Perhaps the most important thing about shows like these, that center on the relationship between a vaguely parental figure and child, is the personality of the child in question. They tend to be the core of the story's universe, and here, the fact that Souta's tanuki friend is barely capable of speech means he doesn't really possess any personality beyond “bright-eyed wonder.” The tanuki boy is so far an adorable plot device, not a person, and that gives me little reason to care about either his story or what Souta might learn from his presence.

On top of that, the dramatic moments regarding the relationship between Souta and his father are really poorly handled here. The conversation where Souta's new friend accidentally reveals his tanukiness is easily the worst scene of the episode, largely because of how clumsily it conveys Souta's lingering regrets. Souta's feelings regarding his father are barely hinted at up to that point, when suddenly two random strangers are used as a chorus to echo his own anxieties. The sequence was both on-the- nose and dramatically unbelievable, a clumsy piece of storytelling that echoed the general clumsiness of using this tanuki to help Souta reconnect to his childhood.

There were awkward little missteps like that all through this episode, but it wasn't all bad. I thought the show's visual and sound design did a very nice job of evoking the rainy day of this episode's second half, and some of the visual gags with the tanuki boy were pretty cute. But overall, this episode's combination of a weak take on its genre and fumbling execution leave me less than hopeful about the show's future.

Theron Martin

Rating:

Did the success of Bunny Drop back in 2011 inspire a whole new subgenre of slice-of- life stories about 30ish single men looking after young children? That would seem to be the case, as the source manga for both last season's Sweetness & Lightning and this series have started publication since that series aired. The initial circumstances aren't so different from Bunny Drop, either, with the protagonist coming back home after a family member (father in this case, grandfather in that case) died, only to find a young child hanging around the place. The big difference, of course – and the one which will assure at least a partially different direction – is the supernatural element inherent in this case.

Overall, the first episode provides a satisfying if not especially remarkable take on the concept. The main character clearly had some big blow-up with his father which led to him abandoning the family business (and rural life) for Tokyo, and I have to wonder if the issues with his ankle have something to do with that. Regardless, that establishes some clear dramatic impetus for conflicted feelings and the bouts of nostalgia he experiences. (The closer, which apparently depicts his memories of his childhood, also very smoothly fits into this.) That then sets up the way he relates to the child he encounters, since putting the raincoat on the child connects Sota to his own experiences when he was about as small as that child. It also at least starts to lay a foundation for why he might eventually take the child in and start up the udon shop again; it could be penance, or perhaps trying to understand his father better by taking on a fatherly role. Meanwhile, the child's interactions are cute, but I did find him all that interesting or cloying until his tanuki aspect manifested. That definitely adds a shake-up to the basic scenario.

The production effort by LIDEN Films isn't anything overly special, either, but also isn't bad, with a softness and restraint to the color which promotes the homey feel of the setting quite well. I also found the characters speaking with rural accents (which the subtitles translate as country accent) to be a quite fitting choice, as it helps promote the separation between Sota's life in Tokyo and his former life in Kagawa Prefecture. The musical score is also fitting. I did find it strange that the first episode actually uses the opener, which reveals the child's tanuki nature; if this had been obvious throughout, sure, but the episode saved that revelation for near its end.

So basically, if you're in the mood for something sweet and sentimental this season – and especially if you were a fan of Sweetness & Lightning – then this series is definitely worth a look.