Similar to shows like Plastic Memories, the basic setup and the writing are meant to evoke maximum tears and sadness, with Somali afraid "dad" will leave her, and the forest spirit realizing his emotions and feeling like the father she never had.
They're not interesting and lack any real characterization. The only characters to reappear later are Shizuno and Yabashira, and while they work okay as support, they seem primarily there because they are familiar yokai to the Japanese. Nothing is very memorable other than Haitora and Uzoi's relationship, which has a few parallels to that of Somali and the forest spirit, while also exploring human and grotesque conflict (grotesque is what humans call non-humans). Somali, as a child, is a simple character, and though they meet many other characters along the way, they soon part after 1-3 episodes. Unfortunately, the forest spirit plays the emotionless drone-looking character with maximum blandness, where he seems emotionless, but either his true emotions are buried away, or he comes to understand human emotions by traveling with Somali. There are advantages and disadvantages to both approaches, but the choices here sometimes made the world building feel very random. It really appears that there isn't an intention to create distinct cities and cultures, but more so a tendency to have a lot of interesting locations and creatures to look at. oni, talking cats (with extra eyes), and witches that look like humans but have an enhanced lifespan and magical abilities. Many of them look like anthropomorphized animals, but there are also harpies. I suppose the main reason was that it was more fun to draw such a diverse range of characters, and it does provide a lot of visual variety. Only the mixture of goats and dogs at the end seemed to have a distinct culture (I guess the witches, too). It's common for fantasies to be multicultural, but this is taking it to extremes-in a crowd I could almost never spot two characters that looked remotely the same in multiple cities, except for examples such as Kikila's family and the witches. It seems the creator attempted to make nearly every individual creature unique.
The human race was wiped out, replaced by cities resembling the cantina bar from Star Wars.
Seeing as his role as a forest spirit will soon end, he goes on a journey to find her a group of humans she can remain with. Little Somali appears to be an abused and abandoned slave when the forest spirit finds her. But, wait, what's with that name? Somali is a country in Africa, so why is a character in a fantasy anime named Somali? Perhaps this seemed an exotic name to the Japanese creator, who might have never looked at a map or had much of an interest in geography? The name actually comes from the cat who found Somali, but it's still a very strange choice. There's really no funny business in Somali-this is a fairly wholesome show, and the target audience seems to be mostly children. There's another manga with a similar premise to the Somali anime, but I can't find the name. What is it with anime and weird magical creatures with minimal or non-existent emotions looking after teenage or prepubescent girls? Other shows include The Ancient Magus' Bride, featuring a rather stupid-looking skull with clothing that buys a teenage girl from an auction and has a romantic/dad/husband relationship with her (it's kind of hard to tell without seeing the whole series).
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