Wagaya no Oinari-sama - Episode 6

Episode six of Wagaya no Oinari-sama reintroduces Sakura, who we saw a few episodes back, to the series as Tamaki's love interest (well, Sakura is interested in him, rather than vice versa), and in all honesty the show is all the better for it. Yes, this development does move the series into that rather clichéd realm of the harem anime, and to complement that at times it does become rather fan service-y to boot, but despite that this episode at last somehow manages to regain the sense of fun that is more or less its only redeeming feature thus far, cutting down the need for any action to a bare minimum (it barely gets a minute of screen time) and instead just going with the kind of situations you'd expect, from misunderstandings to desperate attempts to explain away Kou and Kuu's odd behaviour and the like.

To be honest, part of me almost wishes Sakura had been introduced as the main character of the series rather than the two brothers, as she possesses a barrel-load more personality than the two of them put together, and actually gets most of the amusing moments in the episode in which she features rather than simply being the focus of attacks by random and more often than not stupid spirits every episode. Her love interest in Tamaki is as clichéd as you imagine, as I've already mentioned, but at least it feels genuine and her overall personality shines through where every other character in the show seems, to be honest, a little dull - and it's really coming to something when you're discussing a series about a fox-girl-god-spirit-thing, but you find said fox-girl-god-spirit-thing boring and predictable.

While it looks like the next episode will return to more spirit-based fare, to be honest I'd rather it stick to its fish out of water, slice of life focus which seems to hold the richest materials for what is admittedly a very average series at best anyway.