Yep, this series has definitely turned into “Hoozuki’s Animal Kingdom” lately – with Karashi especially emerging as the new star.  I’m fine with that in the sense that she’s a very funny character (Tanezaki Atsumi has an awful lot to do with that), but it’s a bit annoying in the sense that it’s coming at the expense of the rest of the cast (which I happen to like a lot).  It’s also more than a bit odd – did Deen intentionally save up all these animal chapters intending to use them to close the series?  Did they use up all the “canon” stuff too early, or maybe the manga itself has shifted in this direction?

• Well – if it’s all usagi all the time, I guess you could do a lot worse than this one (and you’d be hard pressed to do better)…
• The bit with Karashi’s whiskers in the wind was beautifully animated, I have to say.  Flat-out gorge…
• It’s been a big year for tanuki in anime, that’s for sure.
• Karashi having Golgo 13 as the model of what she wants to become is rather… fitting.
• Karashi hopping up the steps of the temple – to thine own bunnyness be true.
• A fox that bit a priest to death?  I don’t know that myth, but the tanuki and kitsune high priests squabbling like an old married couple while the teapot-tanuki apologized for them was pretty cute.
• Tanuki dirty jokes…
• The B-part, with the doubutsu MMA tournament, was more bizarre than funny to me, but I liked the way it ended.
• “God damn!”  Why do Japanese find that English phrase so hilarious?
• I’m embarrassed to admit it but – I never realized that Kasha was a girl before this.
• Karashi finally meeting her match – a day I thought would never come.  “Cat rules” are still unbeaten, indeed.