Since I started blogging in 2010, I’ve taken part in 4 Secret Santa invitations from the Reverse Thieves, and you can bet I wasn’t planning on skipping this year. I didn’t plan on stalling long enough to not have it ready until today, and for that, I apologize. I hope to not have that happen again in 2016.
I got a fun list of selections, and once again I intended to check them all out, only to check out the shortest one. No, not the movie, but the anime Inari Kon Kon, which debuted last year. The only thing I remembered was there was a scene with the main character, a boy, and pants being pulled down to reveal underwear.
The thing is, the main character was a girl, and the boy had his pants pulled down by that girl.
A year later, I find out who all these characters are, and it took only 10 episodes to do so.
It’s hard to say how all young people can act, but more or less they’re going to do stupid things. Inari happens to do very stupid things. The reasons generally range from admirable (for her friends) to timely. More then often though, it ranges from just plain dumb. She was told she can’t transform into anyone aside from a human, and yet, she tries to transform into Uka twice — this saps Uka of most of her divine power. She then uses that power to transform into humans to solve her problems — that comes into play when a love triangle between her, a student, and Tanbabashi ends with her confessing her feelings in someone else’s body to someone she loves. Needless to say, this comes back to bite her towards the end, where that student finds out Inari didn’t do what she requested (although I’ll say this: surely you could have dropped off the letter in Tanababashi’s locker yourself instead of giving it to someone close to him, like Inari). That, in of itself, may have been the death knell that said that humans shouldn’t be all that close to gods.
But the series isn’t quite as heavy on Japanese culture as you would expect — I mean, you have a god who got turned onto video games by another god. I don’t think that was focused on enough, but the story is centered around Inari, and how she has to struggle through her feelings of guilt. She manages to be comfortable around most people, including one who seemed to be her rival in love, Suzunome. As it turns out, you can’t judge by appearances, as Suzunome’s pretty calm, but also somewhat of a manga nerd (maybe more shoujo nerd), and just as clumsy as Inari, she just doesn’t have divine powers. I admit I was worried she’d come off as the typical elitist type, but instead she’s not, and becomes that new rock for Inari that she needed.
This isn’t to shortchange her other long time friends Keiko and Maru, who each help Inari out in the story. This also isn’t shortchanging her chuunibyou phased brother Touka, who seemed to not be of much note until his interactions with Uka became more serious. But with Inari working to accept who she is, and then also trying to control her divine power, Suzunome’s appearance worked better than I think I even thought of, and helps balance everything out.
The ending of this series reminded me a lot of Hikaru no Go. If you know what happens in that series, this is kind of what happens here, where eventually, two scenarios happen: you grow up, or you move forward with your life. Uka and Inari had a relationship that dates back to when Inari was a child — she just didn’t see Uka yet. They’re connected, one way or another. Now that time is over, and life goes on. It’s never easy, but that’s when you have to take what you’ve learned and use that as the struggles in life continues.
So, in summing this series up, I’m…kind of thinking it’s fine. Not the best thing in the world. I feel like there were some issues (like taking over Suzunome’s consciousness, then finding a way to let that part go when it could have been dramatic and a test of Inari’s power in Episode 2 was weak) that prevent most of Inari Kon Kon to hold up. But it does have a good ending, and solid characters. I’m mainly glad I was recommended this title, and thank the person who suggested it to me.
