A Rice Ball Picnic With the Whole Forest Watching
The key visual, unveiled in a PR TIMES release from Frontier Works, the Animate Group publisher behind the franchise, puts the two leads front and center as they happily bite into rice balls. The tagline above them translates to "Just being with you makes every day special." Around the pair, rabbits gather, forest friends snack on dango dumplings, and a bear and a wolf peek out from the shade of the trees. The publisher frames the image as a snapshot of the show's whole appeal: a gentle, slightly surreal everyday life unfolding deep in the forest.
Atamoto's original manga stars a slightly spacey tanuki and a slightly mischievous fox whose laid-back friendship anchors the series, and the franchise has now passed 1.35 million copies in circulation. Longtime fans will remember that the property was animated once before, as a run of short YouTube episodes back in 2018. The October series is its first proper TV anime.
Atamoto Marks 10 Years With a Message to Fans
Alongside the visual, Frontier Works published a comment from creator Atamoto, who credited readers for carrying the series to a TV adaptation in its milestone year. Getting an anime made for the 10th anniversary, the author wrote, "is entirely thanks to everyone who has supported the series," adding that the anime staff are building "a lively, adorable world that goes beyond the original." Atamoto closed by asking fans to enjoy the anime version of Tanuki to Kitsune.
Yurutto 2 Packs In 61 Pages of New Material
The other headline from the release is print-side news: Tanuki to Kitsune Yurutto 2 arrives in Japanese bookstores on October 15, 2026, priced at 913 yen. The Yurutto line is the franchise's black-and-white spinoff series focused on especially low-key daily life, in contrast to the full-color main series, which runs 10 volumes. Volume 2 includes a hefty 61 pages of newly drawn material, covering episodes from the duo's childhood plus stories that dress the pair up as detectives and heroes.
Beyond the comics, Frontier Works also publishes three Tanuki to Kitsune picture books, and the new volume hits shelves the same month the anime premieres.
Looking Ahead
The TV anime premieres October 4, 2026, airing Sundays at 7:00 AM inside Ani-mori!, a morning anime block carried across six stations of the TV Tokyo network. Tommy Hino directs, Rika Kihara handles the scripts, and animation production is at Akatsuki Media Studio, a Tokyo studio owned by mobile game company Akatsuki. No voice cast has been announced yet, so the biggest question about the adaptation is still open.
There is also no word yet on international streaming, and the manga has no announced English-language edition so far. Updates are posted through the official Tanuki to Kitsune website and the series' official X account, which is where any cast reveal is likely to land before the fall season starts.