Several years after the death of his mother, Kazuya (your baby-faced generic steadfast high-school protagonist) meets a mystical perverted pudding-obsessed tom-boyish blue-haired girl Kiriha, one day who saves his life from a dude sporting a wig that comes alive attacking him (probably a nod to the grudge).
She explains to him how he’s been with him all his life in the form of his mother’s silk obi kimono, which is pretty wild if you think about it. Imagine having a blanket you’ve slept with and drooled on and dirtied all your life to then have to face them as a living, breathing, person.
I like supernatural things, and I think the concept of cherished relics (and everyday objects) we hold significant value towards coming alive as tsugumomo is a truly unique concept. It makes sense because in reality people worship idols like singers & movie stars as well as objects… like money & food.
The beginning starts off with the pair, Kayuza and his guardian Kiriha fighting off manifested bad spirits around his school. A wig, a love potion, a pair of underwear, a pillow, a sketchpad and so on, the spirits and the objects they represent get fairly creative.
Then the anime introduces Gods, which is cool and all, they guard specific districts of Japan, but then a concept is introduced, and it makes me face-palm. When spirits use up all their pent up energy, they revert to a smaller form of themselves (alright?)… in the form of children (I get it…), and if you could guess where this is going (oh no)… perverted characters like Kiriha do perverted things to characters like Kukuri in their reverted state, straight up lolis and it really dampers the experience of the anime for a time.
If you can overlook the cringe-induced scenes, which somehow makes up only a chunk of the series, the rest is pretty good! And it actually has a plot (holy sh*t for real?)!
We get into juicy arcs like a village of tsugumomo without masters that just want to coexist, a heated battle between tsugumomo-wielders to become the sole exorcist of the land (which I’ll get to in a moment), SPOILERS the mysterious reappearance of Kanaka END OF SPOILER. And the anime hasn’t touched on even half the story.
One of my favorite arcs is the introduction of Sunao Sumeragi, a sword-welding exorcist that tries to put Kazuya in his place so she can become the guardian of the district. But where she treats her sword Totetsu like the object that he actually is, Kazuya comes to treat his obi Kiriha like family (with benefits…). You could probably guess how this fight turns out. The result of this encounter is a fairly positive moral to the story, as kindness or love cannot be repaid or shared if one is treated like an object.
But anyhow! Back to this arc… Sumeragi’s mother won’t accept her defeat unless she marries Kazuya or ends her life (harsh as f*ck), so a hilarious compilation of mishaps occur when Sumeragi and Kazuya try to pretend to be lovers, from attempting to wash each other to pretending to sleep together. All the while her beast of a father tries to protect his daughters’ innocence, and gets shut down by his wife every time (like being put in a body bag though ahah… ). I ship Sumeragi and Kazuya, but the bond he has with Kiriha is stronger.
At this point you’ve probably rolled your eyes, thinking our protagonist here is this OP monster slayer from the get-go, but this is not the case! Kazuya is one of those heroes that starts out weak-sauce and is punished into submission my Kihara (under the bridge… and in the bed… eheh). He doesn’t grasp his potential for a while and even into the second season is harassed for not having the prowess of his late mother, one of the best exorcizers to exist. With his complex relationship with Kihara, Kazuya learns to work together with her and they exceed everyone’s expectations.
The reason I didn’t score this higher is because of some of the absurd ecchi scenes (but not all are bad!) and just some of the characters introduced are outright annoying or creepy. I also felt the protagonist could’ve had more of a refined personality, but this is only the anime I’m blabbering about.
I’ve read through the entire manga thus far and will make a seperate post about it, some of the key differences and the difference in genre altogether.
Thanks for reading!
By: The Shy Otaku