Kumamiko: Girl Meets Bear

くまみこ

Machi Amayadori is a fourteen-year-old shrine maiden at a mountain shrine deep in the Tohoku countryside, where her guardian is a talking bear named Natsu. Wanting to attend high school in the city, Machi asks Natsu for help, but the overprotective bear, convinced she is unprepared for the wider world, sets her a string of trials to pass first. Their daily back-and-forth in the village, joined by neighbors and Machi's worldlier relative Yoshio, keeps testing whether she is ready to leave the mountain at all.