Another stellar episode for one of spring’s unheralded gems. This is definitely a theme this season – really good shows generating very little discussion. It’s not a great season, but it has a lot of series plugging away in their dimly-lit corners, deserving of more attention that they’re getting. It’s funny how as anime has become more popular and mainstream – and it indisputably has – public discourse about it has gotten less vigorous. At least in the corners of the net where I poke my head up. Could be just that, or a general decline in the sorts of venues where those conversations used to happen. But it also seems like the volume of discourse about anime is increasingly concentrated on fewer and fewer series (the big commercial hits).

Kujima Utaeba Ie Hororo isn’t one of those, not even in Japan. But if it’s niche, it’s niche in the best possible way. And for me, niche has been what anime has consistently done better than anything else over the course of its existence. Things start off innocently enough here. Arata is freaking out because on getting home from Grandma and Grandpa’s, he discovers that he’s left his winter break homework at school. That means a dreaded trip to school during vacation, and as Kujima seems very interested, Arata decides it’s an opportunity to show his stepsibling what a Japanese junior high school is like.

That’s where things start to go freaky in the low-key fashion this show is so good at. It starts slowly and builds from there, with Arata deciding to dress Kujima in one of his dad’s suits. Arata is great because he’s sweet and childlike, but also randomly insane in the way middle school boys usually are. Not content with the suit – complete with necktie, and boys that age trying to tie those is always an adventure – he slaps a terrifying horse mask (that must have been some school festival) on Kujima’s head. In the mind of a 13 year-old boy, this scans as “OK, now people will think it’s totally normal”.

It’s only a question of how this is going to go badly. You certainly can’t blame the well-meaning teacher for assuming something, well- freaky is going on here. I don’t blame Kujima for being irritated either – they’re really just minding their own business, have to live in secret, and people freak out when they seen them. It was pretty harsh for Arata to gaslight the teacher like that, though in the heat of the moment it seemed like the only option. I was rather encouraged that he pointed out that he felt bad for the guy, because that shows a lot of common sense in the writing.

Kujima’s next encounter comes as Arata’s two buds Icchy and Eiji spot them going into the Kouda house – where they’ve come to check out the “pirog” Arata was bragging about having for dinner that night. There’s no way to explain his way out of that one, so Arata comes clean. But Eiji is weak against horror and Icchy against pointy things, so the boys are none too receptive to Arata’s insistence that Kujima is cute. Arata slips the faithful horse head on Icchy and a sleep mask on Eiji, but it’s only when Kujima’s pirog is done that everyone truly bonds. I had no idea about that whole “pirozhki, pirozhok, pirogi, pirog” hierarchy – and I grew up in Chicago…

This is all great stuff in the effortlessly quirky way Kujima Utaeba Ie Hororo is so adept at. I’m really enjoying the interplay between Murase Ayumu and Kozuki Yuria, especially the way Arata randomly slips into Kujima’s accent whenever he gets worked up. Using the ED as an insert song was very smartly done, too. I always worry that anime will wake up one day and decide weird and wonderful little series like this are no longer a thing, but so far they’re stall managing to sneak onto schedules more often than not, Enjoy them while they last, I say, because I’m not taking for granted that will never change.