Miss Shachiku and the Little Baby Ghost

KANLen09★ 6

When you call a show a spiritual successor, it is for good reason just like the recommendations board: if you liked this, then you'll like that. But for the same reason that while I felt that Sewayaki Kitsune no Senko-san had portrayed its themes of humans overworking and the entities like fox spirits a bit lacking because there is no overarching story or plot for a stress-reliving cute SoL that for some reason I can't click to, it's the same here for Shachiku-san wa Youjo Yuurei ni Iyasaretai. a.k.a Miss Shachiku and the Little Baby Ghost, but a wee bit better. This is a pretty self-explanatorypremise where the usual stance of overworked people truly work overtime till super late until their bodies give way, and entities coming in to improve their lives for the better. Where Senko-san has Senko the fox spirit, Shachiku-san replaces it with baby loli spirit ghosts whom haunt the office of Fushihara, the overworked "Miss Shachiku-san" office worker, tempting them to leave for a nightmare-induced feeling where the nightmare hits harder than work. It's just as simple as that to create the cutesy healing vibes, and I'll give it that for how mangaka Imari Arita wants the series to be. The talking point will always go to the central characters of Fushihara and Yuurei-chan, since this is where the relationship is first established. For one, I'd thought that the VAs did a good job for personating their characters: Fushihara's VA Hisoko Kanemoto being the usual "old-but-young woman" kind of vibe and Yuurei-chan's VA Rina Hidaka being the kid-like figure, whom if you have caught how she sounds by ear, yes, she is the same person that voiced Shield Hero's Filo. The others that follow (cat spirit Myako, Kuruhashi with her maid loli Lily, and the Oni spirit Miko) are all the same, and exhibit the cutest degrees of comfyness, depending on your degree on how you can take cuteness and put it on a radarscope like Fushihara's attachment. Honestly though, having the baby spirit ghosts does improve somebody's life, especially if they're living alone, and Fushihara definitely reaped the benefits by having a companion character that is her ultimate goal of getting enough rest from all that overwork and raising the ghosts like they're part of the family. And this is why I think that for an Iyashikei, moe SoL series like this, the family dynamic raises the bar to be a better version of the sole 1-to-1 caretaker format. Project No. 9's light visuals don't look the best, but one might say that it's decent, just enough to gloss the fact that this show doesn't really need intricate detail to produce, and just focusing on the bigger picture that delivers exactly like how the staff team wants it to portray, and for this it's a pass. Same with the decent OST, it's just exists and is soul-lifting for those who need it. To get a Senko-san copy a few years later, my guess is that if you liked it, then there's no reason why would you hate Shachiku-san, and vice versa. This show serves the Iyashikei niche that many will like and some will hate, and that's OK. For myself, this is just the same as how I remembered Senko-san the few years back, and I can only find this as a decent watch. Maybe you have a better experience than me, so go in and be healed by loli ghost spirits whom can really take care of you and make your life better.

GakutoDeathGlare★ 8

If you enjoy cute, wholesome anime with an adorable cast of characters, then you'll almost certainly come to enjoy Shachiku-san wa Youjo Yuurei ni Iyasaretai. The anime revolves around a hard working, single women who is frequently doing overtime and her stress relief, which comes in the form of little ghost children and yokai. Ghost girls only want the poor lady to leave and not overwork herself to death, friendship and motherly-like bonds develop as they start to spend a lot of time together. We witness their daily lives, however adventurous or mundane it may be, it doesn't matter in the slightest as the interactions betweenthe characters are what make this anime great. Now it's not all sunshine and rainbows, there were a couple of sudden, bleaker tonal shifts that gave this anime a strange atmosphere at times, though these very minimal and only in the first handful of episodes. Also, "big brained" people may take more notice of the workload Ms Shachiku has and relate it to real life Japan, so there's always that playing in the background. Uncomfortable for some, so I can understand these slightly more negative takes. The visuals itself were probably one of the weaker works this season, though it's simplicity rather complimented the easy going, slice of life style, so not much of a problem there. It's an easy watch and one of the better anime I saw this season personally. 8/10, recommended.