An exploration of the significance of her tanuki-ness... Um. I don't know much about raccoons. However, I've had help! Domo arigato, Arashi-dono. She sent me this page, which clears up the animal-girl questions. Well, except for weasel girl. That was Saitoh's invention, so he was probably just making fun of the categories and trying to annoy her. The fox-woman/tanuki-girl categories are a popular classification system in Japan, similar to blood typing. Have you ever noticed how in anime and manga, the younger characters have bigger eyes, and the eyes are bigger in proportion to the face as well? I'd thought of it as merely an age thing, but it also translates to being fox-faced or tanuki-faced. Tanuki-women are seen looking younger and being cute and sweet; fox-women are thought to be self-sufficient, intelligent, mean, and selfish. Interesting... On a semi-related but really obvious note, almost everyone in the series has an animal. Saitoh's a wolf, Kenshin's associated with a dragon, Enishi with a tiger... On the SD keychains (like mine, above) Kenshin's shown holding a cat, Sano a dog, and Yahiko ::snicker:: a monkey. I like that. I think Aoshi has a parrot perched on his sword or something.

Okay, so it's a tiny, tiny section. I thought I had more.