Note: this is from a video review, look for links on my profile page.
Uchouten Kazoku is an attempt at having a social commentary while parodying familiar circumstances with chaos thrown in. It wonders whether different species might have inherently distinct hierarchies and methods at interacting. Do humans or oni only respond to the same visual representation? Might everyone be able to escape danger if, like the mythical tanuki, they were able to change that physicality? How did the skies unleash unfettered imagination for millennia, how different are winged creatures from other walking existences? Is this truly a natural flow among life, or is it merely a delusion seemingly attaching itself to reality? Is fun an inherent quality one should pursue? How common are presumptions made at face value? What do crows obscure in their midst? Can chaos give rise to animation? Do blue skies give shade to one's subjective state? Protagonist's sibling, with hindsight. He's a symbolic bridge between the species. Tanuki exist, but shapeshifting is likely just a legend.
It is art that leads into another world, one where even the fantastic characters seem to think is new for them, it is a mystery hiding wonders, one where nature is reflected even in artificial constructions. A realm permeating life up to the last moment. Who mirrors our externalities? Which normalities become eccentricities? These beclouded sighs, the sea a soil, these avian enshrouded rivulets. What is that spark, that aqueous mental substance, that hazy steam through which relations are processed? Is an age-old timely confusion perhaps the result of the ingrained irrationality? The mind halts just as fear takes over. Who is to say whether recklessness is sensible? Whether idiocy could be contextually advantageous? One could live the depths of the azure, one could swirl mists in the heavens. But the hedgehog's dilemma exists for a reason, despite the oceanic allure of connection.
Is the psychological counterpart of a collective's symbolic will, one's conscious shame, outwardly obvious whether of sane mind, animated, or not? Would one do whatever is physically possible, if there were no consequences? What if physicality was limitless? What if something is only to be understood from a relative context? What if chaos was unbound, reality not on track, the night a day for potentialities? But, is hedonism happiness? Could irrationality ever be positive? Does the short term hold more value than the future, or could it be a satisfying conclusion to the past? Is fun being specifically in the present?
Society at large is in the background in this anime, but what effect does it have on the narrative's characters? How does it go from day to night, how do those hills reflect the thrills of realistic fantasy? Now, since it was written by the same author, yet again (as with Tatami Galaxy) the large 'Daimonji' character is written on a mountain in Kyoto, this is regarded as a send-off of spirits in the Gozan no Okuribi festival, in the series' context the tanuki would presumably think of their father while feeding alcohol to their house's pot.
This story runs like clockwork, having a few constants: acting idiotically is perceived as being likely to lead to interesting outcomes, especially by Yasaburou and his Ebisugawa twin cousins, while the human world seems automated (except for the Friday Fellows who associate with a tengu-human, but even then are most traditional), lights are bright and water reflective, the atmosphere still hints towards the possibility of tanuki tricking others.
At times, their world seems a stage and them actors, but why do they entertain, to be entertained? From a zen calmness, to a furious rage can tengu muster, a tornado of relationships delivered to the skies above; river ever-present, in the direction of the convert, this Raijin fan. Busy society is oblivious to the coming menace, wind soft just there, but the berserked Akadama holds Fujin's fury. Do though, behold, the statuesque one combined with a phone. So the question is, how would supernatural entities, if they existed, interact with a conventional understanding of 'normal'? Notice that even for a tanuki's legendary shapeshifting, some of wind's mythical potency also renders them as helpless as humans.
Ultimately, what Uchouten Kazoku transforms into is an artfully slick, intentionally mad fable that combines fiction and what could happen in a society set within a certain context. It tries to conjure up this magical quality, sometimes literally, and that no matter what expectation is subverted it all still manages to make sense. It's one of P.A. Works' most fantastic anime.
