What’s the important information? Kakuriyo –Bed & Breakfast for Spirits- is a Spring 2018 supernatural romance anime that aired 26 episodes between April and September. It is based on a Light Novel series by Midori Yuma and has been adapted into a Josei manga series too.
What’s it about? Aoi Tsubaki is a lonely college student who has the ability to Ayakshi in the world, a trait she inherited from her now deceased grandfather. One day while walking past a shrine she meets an Ogre god named Odanna. After offering him some food she kidnaps her to the ‘Hidden Realm’, the spiritual home for all Ayakashi. There she learns her grandfather owed Odanna a great debt and in order to repay it she offered Aoi’s hand in marriage. But rather than succumb to his wishes Aoi negotiates with the Ogre god and decides to pay off the debt at Tenjin’ya an inn for Ayakashi.
Why did you watch it? Every season I watch one or two shows that I have little-to-no interest in but that would be of interest to the irlwaifu—lots of hot Ayakashi boys vying for one woman’s attention—this was the one for Spring, other than that there was no other reason for me to watch it.
Did you enjoy the show? I reviewed about 6 episodes before deciding I couldn’t review it episodically but that’s not to speak of the show’s quality—just that I didn’t have anything to talk about! The show is pretty casual and light-hearted but at times it feels like too little actually happens in the show, it certainly didn’t need to be 26 episodes. As much as I complained about the ~creepy~ aspect of framing a love-story against kidnapping and arranged marriage, Aoi is a strong enough character that she’s never taken advantage of by the “good” characters.
What was your favourite episode? The episode that had the most emotional gravitas for me was the finale—Episode 26, with the revelation about the Umi-bouzo’s true nature being particularly touching.
What were your most favourite things about the show? Despite seeming at first glance to be as a show about hot boys and one girl amongst it, there’s actually a lot of other female characters and while Aoi’s interactions with these characters are never ~quite~ as deep as they are with the men they are still interesting character with differing levels of friendship (or rivalry) with Aoi.
What were your least favourite things about the show? Aside from the aforementioned pacing issues the animation can vary in quality at time, never to horrendous levels but it does come off as a little rushed sometimes. Also the stakes in any given episode never really feel all that high—even towards the finale it feels like nobody in the show is taking anything too serious.
Who was your favourite character? While it would be easy (and expected) of me to pick Aoi as I did praise her earlier on in this review she isn’t my favourite character. I’m tossing up between Ginji the white haired wolf-boy who’s just an all-round “good boy” and a lot more likable as a potential love-interest than Odanna. But my love of waifu’s is wanting me to pick the shy, dark-haired beauty of the bath-houses Shizuna, but because of how little screen-time she has I probably should just leave it as Ginji being favourite.
Thoughts on the OP (opening) and ED (ending) and the soundtrack in general? The first OP “Tomoshibi no Manimani” is a gorgeous and moving song and is actually sung by Aoi’s voice actress Nao Toyama, and when they announced a new song for the second cour I thought nothing could compare but rather than trying to replicate the emotional power and sweeping beauty of the first one they went for a straight up banger; “Utsushiyo no Yume” by Nano. As for the ED’s, well there’s way too many to go through them all as nearly every character gets a character song during the end credits but they’re all fairly decent.
What’s something unique about this show? This show has a large emphasis on food—which is nothing new for anime considering the Japanese people’s obsession with it, what is interesting is how it permeates every aspect of the narrative—at first seemingly like a hobby for Aoi (one she’s very skilled at mind you) but then becoming intrinsic to the overarching plot-line of the final arc of the anime. It doesn’t make the earlier episodes dedicated to it feel less ~slight~ of content but it does justify the existence of it throughout the story as being something other than just a hobby.
What other anime are most like it for the sake of comparison? I don’t have a great basis for comparison with this genre. However while I haven’t watched the show, I actually own Kamisama Kiss on blu-ray (it was cheap, so I bought it) and that show looks very much like Kakuriyo.
Who would you recommend it to? There’s a certain demographic for this show and they’ve probably already watched this show—or at the very least have it on their watch list. That’s not to say people who aren’t a part of that demographic won’t find things to enjoy about the show like I did but the effect will be greatly lessened.
Sum up the season in one sentence: ‘Much like vanilla ice-cream its sweet but kind of ordinary, pleasant but nothing bold and more or less delivers the expected experience.’
Final score? 72 out of 100.
Previous Kakuriyo -Bed & Breakfast For Spirits- Reviews:
Episode 1 Review
Episode 2 Review
Episode 3 Review
(No Review For Episode 4)
Episode 5 & 6 Review
Episode 7 Review
(Stopped Reviewing Weekly After Episode 7)
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