An inugami is a dog spirit that avenges or serves its master, sometimes taking human form or possessing the living. Inukami, on the other hand, is a silly show about cute female dog spirits that fight obliterating evil and proliferating righteousness. Oh, boy.

This series, along with Zero’s Familiar, completely tops off my current requirement for entertaining shows that don’t do anything to challenge the viewer. The setup is simple: Keita is from a long line of spiritual mediums that are renown for allying themselves with dog spirits (inu == dog, kami == god) to vanquish evil. Keita’s inukami is Youko. Youko is a pretty, green-haired girl inukami. She is tremendously powerful, highly skilled, cunning, has powers of pyrokinesis and teleporation, and is a huge asset in combatting supernatural terrors. Keita is a highly talented, intelligent, fierce, lazy, shiftless, lecherous, unmotivated sop, around whom what amounts to a harem comedy revolves.

Key to the dynamic of Inukami is the relationship between Keita and Youko. It is, by no means, a clear master-servant relationship, as Youko domineers Keita in a variety of ways, going so far as to use her powers of teleportation to dump him in the middle of the street without his clothes on. Undaunted, Keita seems nearly oblivious to the repercussions of the various behaviors that are likely to end up with him getting his ass kicked and spending the night in jail for streaking. This contentious aspect is tempered by Keita’s kind nature and Youko’s affection for her master.

In the plus column:

Overall good production value, especially in regards to facial expressions. Annoyed Youko:

Sultry Youko:

Surprised Youko:

Though Keita is the lynch pin of the romantic comedy aspect of Inukami, Youko clearly dominates the great majority of the show, as of thirteen episodes in. Her character design allows the animators a great deal of latitude to produce hackneyed, straightforward expressions of joy or anger, as well as more subtle expressions of concern, determination, boredom, and so forth. This is also true of several of the other characters, including Keita, but I’ll get back to his character design later.

Additionally, Inukami presents us with some great non-traditional opponents for our heroes to overcome:

From the very first episode, we knew not to take Keita’s enemies too seriously. The villain? A Flasher. Well, he was the spirit of a failed writer that blah blah blah, but the main thing here was that the threat he posed to society was that he’d run around showing his naughty bits in public and make people’s clothing disappear. Not exactly earth-shaking drama here.

The second episode featured a class of karate practitioners that were possessed by the spirits of wayward dogs. This story featured an absurd amount of muscle-bound men in loincloths licking Keita’s face. Yes, that picture above is the moonlight reflecting off their shiny butts.

In addition to expressive characters and non-standard-issue opponents, Inukami also makes great use of teasing the viewer with silly little scenes in which we overhear two characters engaged in suggestive dialogue while the camera is pointing elsewhere. As the visual for the scene closes in on what sounds like, for example, hot inukami-on-master lovemaking, we see a girl in ecstasy, seemingly confirming out assumptions from the dialogue. The camera continues to reveal more of the scene and… He’s brushing her tail. It’s a stupid gag, and variations are repeated a few times, but it’s quality humor in my book.

In the minus column:

This show has a number of things working for it, alas, it also has some serious drawbacks. The first thing, which nearly put me off from watching the entirety of the first episode, is the character design on the male lead, Keita:

His facial features are effeminate and he wears a collar all the time. As an accessory, I’ve seen women wear chokers. They’re a little odd. As a fashion statement, I’ve seen people wear collars. They’re seriously odd.

Also in the character-design realm of things would be the ten inukami of Keita’s cousin Kaoru. They quite directly fill the various harem-anime female archetypes, including the tomboy, the shy maid, the proud princess-type, the bookworm, the nerd, and the compulsory shrine maiden and twins. It’s like they cast this group directly out of a focus-group test. No, a focus group would have probably narrowed things down. These characters were probably simply lifted off of other popular titles. I suppose the idea here is that by presenting the audience with a wide array of stereotypes, any given viewer is likely to like at least one of them on some level. The problem with this is that the show isn’t about these characters. On average they’ll end up with less than a single episode of focus each.

More serious than the protagonist-design faux pas and hackneyed harem-demographics is the betrayal of the episodic format. Starting with episode 12, it looks like Inukami is taking a dangerous turn into the realm of the melodramatic extended plotline. I’ve seen it before, where a well-produced, lightweight comedy of a reasonably-interesting genre starts taking itself too seriously, to the great detriment of its entertainment value. Yes, I’m looking at you, Kiddy Grade. Folks that have seen more episodes than I have (the English fansubs are trailing by about eight episodes currently) indicate that this may well be the direction the rest of the season takes.

Overall, I give a cautiously-optimistic C+. Check it out if you have some time to spare. You’ll likely have forgotten this show existed a year from now.