Apart from Muhyo to Rouji no Mahouritsu Soudan Jimusho (which isn’t premiering till August, for some reason) Tsukumogami Kashimasu is really the last major premiere of the summer.  And since it was solidly in the second tier of my expectations ladder and one of the few real sleeper picks on my list, it’s kind of a big one in terms of shouldering the load.  Planet With and Hi Score Girl have certainly delivered and Banana Fish is quite a spectacle, but on balance it’s been a strikingly weak first month (which was more or less as expected).

The pedigree here is a good one, though I’m not familiar with the novel (just the fact that it’s a novel is a bit of a positive inference) this series is based on.  Murata Masahiko is a very solid director by any standard, and Telecom Animation Film has been involved with quite a few very good shows in recent years.  The premise is an interesting one too – a young brother and sister team run a rental shop in Fukugawa Ward in old Edo, catering to those who’d rather rent than buy household goods because of the preponderance of fires in the shitamachi.  The hitch is that many of the items they lease out are tsukumogami – cherished items that have become imbued with consciousness and become little Kami in their own right.

One element that immediately sounded the alarm bells for me was the quick revelation that the two siblings, Okou and her younger brother Seiji, are not blood-related, and in fact Okou is trying to draw Seiji into a romantic relationship.  That could end up being fine, but my gut reaction is that it’s pretty trite and tired stuff and if indeed it becomes a major focus of the story, could quickly take what should play as a distinctive and evocative premise and make it feel a lot more pedestrian.

That aside, the pemiere was for the most part pretty good. Whether it’s going to be the ongoing format or not I don’t know, but the first episode is built around a mystery, which Seiji and Okou (especially Seiji) solve with the help of the tsukumogami.  The catch is that the tsukumogami won’t overtly assist or even speak with their owners, so the siblings have to gently manipulate them into helping with the investigation (which involved the disappearance of a mouse netsuke, an arranged marriage unwanted by either party, and a suspicious robbery). The mystery is fine, but it’s along the lines of Teramachi Sanjou no Holmes fine – not insultingly silly, but less interesting than the character interaction that goes on around it.

The shop’s tsukumogami are a likeable bunch, and voiced by a nice group of seiyuu including Hirakawa Daisuke, Iguchi Yuka and the wonderful old-timer Nakano Yutaka, who’s a rare sight in an anime cast these days.  I would imagine they’re going to be the most interesting part of the story, and indeed tsukumogami are one of the most interesting elements of Shinto mythology – their very existence is an unabashedly sentimental conceit, after all.  I’m still liking the potential of Tsukumogami Kashimasu and still getting sleeper vibes, but it’s way too early to declare mission accomplished.