As the world is a very depressing place right now, let us look at a rather wholesome anime series with The Helpful Fox Senko-san.

The show stars salaryman Nakano Kuroto. While at no point would you say work is cruel to him, it’s clear he’s working himself to death. In fact that essence of how he’s slowly killing himself is often manifested as a dark cloud around him. But one day he gets home and an adorable little kitsune ( aka a fox spirit) is cooking him a meal. Like most people who have seen plenty of anime he naturally assumes something is up and pushes her out the door. Fortunately this isn’t one of those shows and he realizes that looks even worse and brings her back in.

Yes this is a wholesome anime, you see Senko here is just doing nice things for him, like welcoming him home, cooking him meals (in fact he mentions it’s been a long time since he’s had a proper meal). Senko  describes herself to his neighbour as his wife/mother.  In fact he’s not even got any of those sort of feelings if you know what I mean, to the surprise of other kitsune. The thing he likes more than anything else is just the softness of their fluffy tails.

The cast is very small with only 4 regular characters that being Kuroto Nakano and Senko. With Their neighbour Koenji Yasuko and Senko’s fellow fox spirit Shiro being basically the entire cast. Sure you get some other people like Senko and Shiro’s boss Yozora and some scenes of other people at Kuroto Nakano’s work. But the show is mainly about Senko, his relationship, and her attempts at helping him deal with his habit of overworking, not that its entirely his fault as other people often come to ask for help and mentions of customers changing details last minute.  From what I’ve heard the situation is all too common in Japan with many people developing depression or worse.

So yeah, that’s most of what I have to say about it. What at first glance you’d think is one of those animes with a character that looks younger than the lead male is really just a wholesome fun show that also is looking at one of the major problems in Japan (though not as darkly done as some other shows like GeGeGe no Kitaro have done with it). That being said people might give you a odd look if they catch you watching the bit at the end where one of the foxes do nice things for the viewer in a first person perspective. (That bit is after the credits so you can just skip it.)

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