Would you believe this fox is actually 900 years old?
Asian Fox-Spirits in Anime and Manga.
- ARIA: Akari encounters a kitsune wedding procession in a recreation of the Fushimi Inari Shrine on Mars.
- Buster Keel! has one of the four greatest evils, Dakki, a seven-tailed fox-demoness with elemental powers (one for each tail, themed after a color), taking the form of a gorgeous buxom woman with blond hair who secretly manipulates an entire kingdom from the shadows as the unseen queen, gathering powerful adventurers to turn into her minions. Showing some knowledge of classics, her two main minions, Gold and Silver, are based on the demons Kinkaku and Ginkaku from Journey to the West, themselves sons of a Huli Jing.
- Cells at Work!: One type of Opportunistic Bacteria is depicted as a hybrid-form kitsune with a gem in the middle of its chest. Quite fitting, since Opportunistic Bacteria side with the immune system when the body's healthy and make trouble when unhealthy, representing the Kitsune's trickster nature.
- Chainsaw Man has the Fox Devil, a being created by humanity's fear of foxes and the mythological creatures inspired by them with it taking the form of a vulpine kaiju. It acts as a Token Heroic Orc as it's one of the few Devils that doesn't outright want to Kill All Humans, but is a Villainous Glutton that only cooperates with people in the hopes of being given tasty enemies and will abandon contractors it deems more effort than they're worth.
- Digimon:
- Renamon and her evolutionary line are all based on kitsune. Her rookie form is a humanoid fox ninja, her champion forms (Kyuubimon and Youkomon) are nine-tailed foxes, her ultimate forms (Taomon and Doumon) are humanoid foxes in onmyōji robes, and her mega forms (Sakuyamon and Kuzuhamon) are humans in Shinto-themed fox armor.
- Kudamon is a white elongated weasel-like fox Digimon coiled around a holy cartridge, and is based on the kudagitsune variant of kitsune.
- Rasenmon Fury Mode is a feral bipedal beast-man clad in purple and black armor, with nine spiralling tails it uses to impale its opponents.
- Dragon Ball Super: Liquiir, the God of Destruction of Universe 8, is a humanoid fox with nine tails.
- The Fox & Little Tanuki is about a grumpy bakekitsune named Senzou who, after wreaking havoc across the land with his considerable powers, is sealed away for several centuries and then freed by the Sun Goddess so that he can raise a Tanuki pup to become a servant of the gods, on the grounds that his powers be restored if he succeeds. His backstory involves Fantastic Racism between black kitsune like himself, and the white kitsune who are chosen to serve gods as well - one such white fox named Koyuki serves as his caretaker in the modern day.
- Ga-Rei: The Nine-Tailed Demon-Fox is said to have been a powerful kitsune who laid waste to India and China before attacking Japan, where it became the Spirit Beast of the evil exorcist Tamamo-no-Mae. After Tamamo was killed, the Nine-Tailed Demon-Fox's crystalized soul formed into the Bane Stones, which the protagonists spend most of the plot recovering to ensure it doesn't come back. It's eventually revealed that the Nine-Tailed Demon-Fox is actually a giant singularity of hatred and Destroyer Deity meant to cleanse the Earth of all life and is more draconic than vulpine in appearance. Kagura uses its power to revive Kensuke after he's killed (and, subconsciously, Yomi too) at the cost of most of Tokyo, nearly killing her in the process. Nice Job Breaking It, Hero.
- GARO: Crimson Moon: The fox deity Inari, depicted as a trio of black-haired women wearing fox-themed uniforms, give orders to Raikou (the wearer of the Garo armor) and a female Makai Alchemist named Seimei; occasionally using kitsune to deliver orders.
- GeGeGe no Kitarō often features Youko as the many Yokai featured, especially the Kyuubi no Kitsune or Tamamo-no-Mae, a recurring antagonist. Tamamo reaches her peak of danger in the 2018 anime, where not only she's the last of the Four Treasonous Generals to appear, but also using her "clones" (avatars physically resembling her human form but with only a fraction of her power and a single tail each) to brainwash various world leaders into declaring war on Japan. Her main body manages to turn the Oni of Hell against Enma and devour the Hell King, gaining a huge boost in power. Notably, she lets out a loud vulpine cry as she transforms into her giant fox form.
- Gintaro and Haru of Gingitsune (Silver Fox). As Heralds, they are the spirits of dead foxes given new names after death. Haru, being relatively young, doesn't have as much skill or power as Gintaro does.
- Gugure! Kokkuri-san: The titular Kokkuri is a kitsune summoned by the main character, Kohina Ichimatsu. More specifically, he's who the Kokkuri divination game is named after, as it's often believed that playing Kokkuri summons a fox spirit.
- Gundam: The Ninja-themed manga Hidden Shadow of G features the Bound Fox, a Kitsune-themed variant of Zeta Gundam's Bound Dog Transforming Mecha with a conveniently placed array of rear-mounted drop tanks.
- Hell Teacher Nube: Nube gained a rival who was a kitsune in human guise; later, Nube went to confront the nine-tails kitsune.
- The Helpful Fox Senko-san details the story of Senko, a 900-year-old inari kitsune, descending from the divine realm to act as the caretaker for Nakano, a regular human Salaryman working at a "black company" that pushes him hard enough that his stress and depression physically leaks out and starts affecting the world around him. What follows is Senko doing her best to pamper him in order to relieve his stress, one major method being him fluffing her soft tail, which she reacts in an interesting way to. There are also several other kitsune in the story, such as Senko's co-worker Shiro and their boss Sora.
- Hetalia: Axis Powers: Japan dresses in a kitsune costume, complete with ears and tail, for one Halloween
◊. - Hozuki's Coolheadedness has several kitsune among the recurring cast.
- Gon is a lazy kitsune running a Host Club in the Red Light District. The club is staffed entirely with other kitsune who used to take the form of Pretty Boy hosts thanks to their shapeshifting powers, but eventually realised that they get more customers by staying in their animal form and turning it into a fox café.
- Daji the nine-tailed fox is a recurring character and the owner of the aforementioned cafe. Gon is working there because Daji is the only thing that scares him enough to put him to work.
- Hoshin Engi: So Dakki is a nine-tailed fox monster in human guise, though the power to assume a human form is a common trait of Youkai in general. Considering that the story takes place in ancient China and is inspired by the Chinese classic Fengshen Yanyi, she technically counts as a hu li jing.
- Hyper Police: Sakura the kyuubi is a fox-spirit who has eight-and-one-fifth tails.
- Inu × Boku SS: Soushi Miketsukami is a Half-Human Hybrid variant of kitsune.
- Inuyasha has Shippou, an orphaned kitsune child who tags along with Inuyasha and Kagome (and she herself was momentarily accused of being one at the beginning of the story). His appearance is mostly humanoid aside from having a fox's tail and feet, and his abilities are largely limited to shapeshifting and illusions that don't last long. The group doesn't entirely take Shippou's abilities seriously because he is a child, although they do take his heart and will to help seriously. Much later in the story, a small arc focuses entirely on the group's stay at an inn that turns out to be a testing ground for a group of youthful Kitsune who are going through examinations (in field testing, as it were). Due to the accidental encounter with the testing grounds, Shippou is forced to sit the exams as well. Despite having made no preparation (and not even known his kind had to take exams on a regular basis) and being one of the youngest examinees, Shippou quickly proves to everyone that when he's compared to his own kind, his abilities are leagues ahead of a child his age, and even far in advance of most of the older students as well.
- Tomoe from Kamisama Kiss is a kitsune, typically appearing as an attractive young man with a fox's ears and tail. He has all the typical slyness of a fox, as well as the ability to shapeshift.
- Ukon from Kami-sama no Ekohiiki is a small talking fox who's also the attendant of a nameless Shinto god, similarly to how foxes are traditionally viewed as attendants/messengers of the god Inari.
- Kekkaishi features an ailing kitsune as the leader of the Kokuboro that serve as the antagonists for much of the anime adaptation.
- Kitsune no Yomeiri: In addition to the main character Kyouka, the White Kitsune Princess, a number of other kitsune turn up. All of them exhibit magical powers and are tricksters to some extent but only the upper-class kitsune take on human form for any length of time.
- Kyubi no Kitsune to Tobimaru: An ill-fated 1968 anime adaptation of a novel by Okamoto Kidō based on the legend of Tamamo-no-Mae, wherein the young Emperor Tobimaru meets and falls in love with a beautiful girl named Tamamo, who turns out to be an evil nine-tailed fox.note
- In Love Hina, while she's not a true kitsune, Mitsune Konno is nicknamed "Kitsune" partly as a pun on her name, partly because she looks sort of like a fox (especially since her eyes are usually closed), and mostly because she's a gossip and trickster who loves being a tease to Keitaro.
- One of the yokai in Mononoke Sharing is a kitsune named Yooko. She's the resident Lovable Sex Maniac of the group.
- Naruto:
- The Nine-Tailed Fox is introduced as a calamitously powerful evil nine-tailed kitsune that attacked the village of Konoha without provocation before being sealed inside the protagonist, Naruto Uzumaki, by the Fourth Hokage. However, the Nine-Tails isn't a traditional nine-tailed kitsune; it's the strongest of the Tailed Beasts, nine colossal monsters made of living sapient chakra, and describes itself as a "living mass of malevolence" consumed by hatred for humanity. It turns out that "evil" isn't quite the right term, just very, very angry at humans for generations of using him as a living weapon. Naruto slowly gets the Nine-Tails to let go of his grudge, at least in regards to him, and in a shout-out to Yu Yu Hakusho the Nine Tails' name is eventually revealed to be Kurama.
- Naruto himself has a few fox-like attributes, such as marks on his cheeks that look like whiskers (likely because his mother was the previous host of the Nine-Tailed Fox), a tendency to close his eyes making him look like a fox, being Cunning Like a Fox, and the Sexy Jutsu. By tapping into the Nine-Tails' power, he can wreathe himself in a vulpine Animal Battle Aura, which initially serves as his Superpowered Evil Side.
- In the Naruto (1997) pilot Naruto was the son of the Nine-Tailed Fox demon. His father was killed years ago and Naruto was taken in by a human. Naruto lives in human form but his "true form" is a fox. In the pilot, Naruto is much brattier and more of a trickster than he is in the final manga.
- Natsume's Book of Friends features a small kitsune child who follows Natume home from his class trip.
- Neko Musume Michikusa Nikki: Kokkuri-san is a lesbian kitsune who works as one of The Seven Mysteries of the elementary school and takes a liking to Chika, one of the students.
- Nura: Rise of the Yokai Clan's Big Bad is Haguromo Gitsune, a nine-tailed fox, who is about to give birth to a monster. She wasn't always quite so evil, since she was willing to reabsorb and rebirth her grown son so he'd be immortal... and then she was killed and her son (Abe no Seimei below) vowed revenge.
- Omamori Himari has the budding Big Bad as a Nine-Tailed Kitsune and her Shuten-doji spokesman.
- One Piece: Kitsune are introduced, appropriately enough, in the Land of Wano Arc:
- It's revealed that exists the mythical Zoan Dog Dog model Nine-Tailed Fox, which allows the eater to turn into a nine-tailed fox or a Half-Human Hybrid and even shapeshift at will. It was eaten by Catarina Devon, of the Blackbeard Pirates.
- Komagitsune (large foxes with flame-like tuffs of fur) are among the fauna of Wano. One of them, named Onimaru, was the pet of a Daimyo, Shimotsuki Ushimaru, and guarded its master's grave after his demise. He befriended Kawamatsu the Kappa and helped him gather weapons for the rebellion against Orochi, taking human form and the alias of Gyuukimaru of Oihagi Bridge.
- Otogi Matsuri: Yomogi's fox-like spiritual companions, who can be seen and heard only by her (and later, Yousuke.) They mainly serve to assist her with menial tasks such as cleaning and to warn her of impending danger.
- The heroines of Otome Youkai Zakuro are artificially-created half-kitsune hybrids created from female fetuses being magically mutated with the blood of natural kitsune.
- Pet Shop of Horrors: Ten-Chan is one of the very few residents of the shop that you'd actually want to run into, being both benevolent and powerful. He only makes two appearances throughout the series, but they make quite an impression. Sadly, the short anime doesn't get up to his manga material.
- Pom Poko: While Studio Ghibli's film focuses mostly on tanuki, it's noted by there were once shapeshifting foxes in the area who chose to live among humans.
- In Rosario + Vampire, this is Kuyou's true form. As the main villain of his own arc he has four tails, while when he returns in the Fairy Tale arc he's gained a fifth tail to demonstrate that he did not forget to level grind.
- Sengoku Youko:
- The main character Tama is a 200-year-old pacifistic kitsune who appears as a young girl and is the travelling companion — and later wife — of the temperamental and initially misanthropic sage Jinka.
- Tama's mother Kuzunoha is a hedonistic and wicked kitsune who ran rampant in the past, causing chaos wherever she went, until she fell in love with the evil Buddhist priest-turned-Mad Scientist Yazen, and desired to become human.
- Jinka is able to temporarily transform into a kitsune by drinking Tama's blood and seeks to permanently become one due to his misanthropy. After being tricked by Yazen into thinking he killed Tama, he goes berserk and devours the flesh of a god to become a thousand-tailed fox-god, and even after his sanity is restored he remains a kitsune.
- Tactics: Youko is a kitsune whom the protagonist has bound to his service. She doesn't seem too upset about this.
- Tamamo-chan’s a Fox!: The protagonist is a fox spirit from Kyoto's famous Fushimi Inari shrine who poses as a high school girl out of curiosity about human life. While her human disguise has almost all the adults perfectly fooled, all her classmates can see right through it, though they don't let on so she doesn't get in trouble.
- Yako from Toilet-Bound Hanako-kun usually appears as a human woman, but her true form is a small white fox. This is because she was originally a fox statue that guarded a shrine gate before she became one of The Seven Mysteries of Kamome Academy.
- Urusei Yatsura features a kitsune-like fox with a crush on Shinobu as a Recurring Character.
- Ushio and Tora: The legendary monster Hakumen no Mono — inspired by the legend of Tamamo-no-Mae — takes the form of a colossal nine-tailed fox with a shark-like face. Compared to most other examples, it's more akin to an Eldritch Abomination, as it's an Omnicidal Maniac entirely made of Yin, and took the combined strength of all the youkai and humans of Japan to drive it away. Despite having been sealed away, it is still as powerful as ever. Furthermore, it originally lived in China and India but later moved to Japan to escape the only thing it fears: the Beast Spear. The series also has a more benevolent example in the Kudagitsune Izuna, a Boisterous Weakling who, along with his unseen brothers, excel at Demonic Possession and helps Ushio and Tora when they have to enter a person's body to remove the demons possessing said person.
- ×××HOLiC: Kudakitsune is a pipe fox in her transformed shape. Watanuki also runs into a kitsune family who runs an oden stand in the spirit world.
- Yaiba: Shiro Amakusa is one of Onimaru's seven swordsmen revived in an animal body, and he got to be reincarnated into a fox. Even when he's in human form, he sports whiskers, ears, and sometimes the tail.
- Yami to Boushi to Hon no Tabibito: Meirin is a three-tailed fox-spirit and Tamamonomae is a nine-tailed fox-spirit, though they may be the same person.
- Yo-kai Watch:
- Kyubi from the games is given a deal of portrayal as a casanova who in a short story arc must harvest 100 heart orbs in order to get promoted and fixates into Katie to get the last one, unsuccessfully. This trait was carried in the games, most notably Yo-kai Watch 2, Blasters, and 3,
- The sequel Yo-kai Watch: Shadowside features his return with both Lightside and Shadowside forms, and adds a Fangirl Kitsune Yo-kai as well, Inari (Lightside)/Tatarigitsune (Shadowside). The movie prior to the series marks his first appearance in Shadowside-related material, and his Shadowside form is more feral, and quadrupedal.
- Yo-kai Watch: Forever Friends sets Tamamo-no-Mae as one of the Big Bad Ensemble.
- YuYu Hakusho: Kurama is a kitsune who was gravely injured, and inhabited his spirit into a female human's womb, where she would eventually give birth to him in human form while he recovered. Possibly Koto (seems fox-like but meows occasionally in the manga; could just be that the translators didn't know either).
