Shiho Kokido
Poco (voice)
Series
On a visit to his hometown, Souta Tawara meets a strange child who loves udon and frogs... and has ears and a tail?! Although ordinary at first glance, it turns out that this little tyke is actually a tanuki in a human disguise! So begins the tale of a gentle, warm, and slightly weird family in Kagawa prefecture, better known as "Udon Prefecture," where time passes at a less hurried pace than in the big city...
Available in US
Stream Now
Buy
Season guide
12 episodes available
After his father's death, Souta Tawara, a web designer who left his hometown in Kagawa prefecture to live in Tokyo, returns to the countryside where he grew up. His father ran a popular udon restaurant, but with no one to take over, the restaurant has closed down. Inside, Souta finds a child fast asleep in an iron pot—a shoeless, dirty, and absolutely starving child. But when Souta tries to take the lost tyke to the police, the rug rat grows an ears and a tail before his very eyes. This is no ordinary child—it's a tanuki in a human form!
Souta is freaked out by his encounter with a shape-shifting tanuki, but how could anyone leave such a lonely-seeming little thing to fend for itself? He offers the hungry crybaby some shoyumame to eat, and a bath to boot. After that, Souta decides to take the kid into town via the Kotoden train line for some much-needed clothes shopping. There he runs into his first love, Manabe-san, now the mother of two young children, and coincidentally enough, she has her own little ones in tow, too. Caught off guard, Souta introduces the tiny tanuki by the first name that pops into his head: "Poco."
On screen
Poco (voice)
Souta Tawara (voice)
Shinobu Nakajima (voice)
More from the vault