Urara Meirochou

Kirara series about fortune telling and tummies. Lots of tummies.

It starts off with a forest girl named Chiya, who leaves the mountains to go to Meirochou upon turning 15, where she begins training to become an Urara fortune-teller alongside a knowledgeable not-a-fox (I guess? sounds fake but ok) girl named Kon, this season's Ayaya named Koume, and a shy girl named Nono who carries around a Creepy Doll whose voice I recognize from somewhere? Nice to see myself in an anime character this strongly.

There's also their teacher, Nina, the owner of Natsume's tea house who does tea-leaf divination, and Officer Saku, who has a strong sense of ethics and really needs to find less-creepy lackeys.

A cute series about cute girls doing cute things. I like to watch one every season.

Chiya sure looks well groomed for a wild child. I wonder what's her story. And her habit of showing her belly when apologizing is hilarious.

Ok this show is going to give me a belly fetish... that quirk is really quirky.

I do love how they combined Nico and Nozomi into one character with Koume.

Well, I would have to keep an eye on this—Kirara Miracle seems to have a tendency to be a bit more mature than, say, Caret or Max.

This is the first time I've seen the medieval Japan being used as the backdrop for a Kirara series, so in the first blush you may say this is GochiUsa IN ANCIENT JAPAN!, but the fact that The Protagonist is already Shrouded in Myth (Wild Child plus Parental Abandonment) already points to something else.

@Ruise:
I won't call Koume the "local Ayaya" in any angle, Kon is more like it, despite her animal motif. To me, at this point her main trope is As Long as It Sounds Foreign. By the way, her seiyuu is Yurika Kubo, which mean... in Memer's terminology, she's also Hanayo.

Another seiyuu I can recognize from the main four is Haruka Yoshimura, best known for Shirobako's Ema. Ema's also a Shrinking Violet... but not this much.

This is fairly clearly Taishou or late Meiji. Probably Taishou; Saku's outfit is heavily associated with it

edited 9th Jan '17 7:41:21 PM by Hylarn

I'll just say it's a mishmash. There're buses, but buses doesn't enter full use until the Kanto earthquake. On the other hand, the houses are a bit too Japanese to be in the first 20-25 years of 20th century; that looks more like no later than 1880s...

I wasn't sure if it was supposed to be Japan, or some sort of fictional spiritual Asian country. Like Khura'in

Work article launched at Manga.Urara Meirocho. Unlike the usual pipeline, I decided to start the character sheet immediately. Half of the tropes for works like these would be character tropes anyway, and I'd rather not spend the time to "split" the work page into character sheet later.

Um, about that character page. Saku is quite the Bifauxnen and all but I'm pretty sure she is female.

Fixed.

Is the legendary urara Chiya's mother?

Well, this is more dramatic than I'd expected

From the way it's set up, Chiya's mom is probably going to turn out to be the legendary urara or one of the gods. Or both

As I noted, I do expect some level of drama from this since this is in Miracle! than in, say, Caret. Castle Town Dandelion is one of the more dramatic of a non-Forward series, and I have to say emotion is higher in Koufuku Graffiti or Sakura Trick than in, say, New Game!.

It seems like Saku is significantly older than the main 4? And is Meirocho a woman-only town after the gates' closed?

Yep, Chiyo's mom will turn out to be the legendary Urara. Not sure if it could even be called a twist.

But yeah, this was a bit more serious than I expected, but I like it. Chiyo is great, I loved both her more serious moments and her usual silliness. Also, she has Saku warped around her finger by now.

Chiyo can hear the voices of gods, I guess she's a chosen Urara then.

So is Setsu deads?

I mean, long-haired mystery urara in the opening segment has the same hair color, so she probably is the legendary urara and Chiya's mother.

Setsu's probably a god.

Man, there's an overload of CGDCT this season. Gonna see if I'll feel like continuing with this show after the next episode.

edited 15th Jan '17 2:28:12 AM by fillerdude

Kind of wonder about how a town like Meirochou even works, as barring Saku and her cohorts, literally everyone seems to be an Urara or urara-in-training. Wouldn't they have hit competitive saturation already?

It's anime, don't expend too much neural activity on it

Well, there is that restaurant that they eat at. So it's possible that the non-urara establishments just don't get screentime.

Another possibility I can think of is that urara conduct other services on the side. I would imagine an urara that specializes in tea-leaf divination would think of opening up a Japaneses sweets shop. Or urara that search for hidden treasures, or maybe even find criminals for the government! Holy crap that last one sounds like an anime in and of itself.

I agree with fillerdude on this. Most places seems to work in the same way as Natsume-ya.

Makes sense, I guess. So Uraras with something on the side to tide things over while there's no one asking for divinations.

Realistically, I imagine in most cases it would quickly become having a regular job while occasionally doing divinations

Although note that it seems Meirocho has a monopoly on divination in this universe, due to the existence of some specific gods.

Kon using Chiya's hair as a blanket: Supreme Cuteness.

Everyone had something to say about their mom. Except Koume.

Hum...perhaps performing a divination that uses fire was a bad idea for a first training session.

Heh, Saku sure built up a harem effortlessly.

Foxes and tanuki are said to be mortal enemies

It's weird how the OP seems to ship Kon x Koume and Chiya x Nono when those haven't shown up in the show itself at all