Indeed, my main question at this point is, are there any actual characteristics that need explaining? (The "hint" in 1543 is tempting, but I can't be sure it's not just one of the random things in an obviously cluttered office / storage room.) Much has been made of the bow tie that "emotes like fox ears", but there's not much independent evidence yet where that lies on the spectrum from "important clue" to "Fred herring put in because it's indescribably cute".Invisigoth wrote: ↑Thu Dec 13, 2018 5:38 pmthere's no indication that Megumi is hiding tails nor that she ever had any tails to be noticed by her familyeomdal wrote: ↑Thu Dec 13, 2018 9:21 amMegumi's [...] kitsune characteristicsInvisigoth wrote: ↑Thu Dec 13, 2018 8:13 amSo far all signs point to her being a mundane cousin [...]
So, unless she was able to conceal this by conscious effort from the womb then she's not a kitsune, just a cousin
In particular, if paarfi is right about her relationship to the rest of the kitsune family:
...then Megumi's only relation to Mugi is through their (mundane) fathers, and Megumi would have no kitsune in her at all.paarfi wrote: ↑Sat Dec 08, 2018 2:08 pmSo I suppose that means the family link between Mugi and Megumi is that their fathers are brothers. Or maybe Mugi and Megumi aren't first cousins. Assumign they are, hat seems to make Mugi's grandma and Megumi's grandma not related at all, which seems a bit odd with Megumi's grandma working at the Foxhole.
I'm starting to think I was wrong in previous threads to refer to "the Sawatari shrine", or think of this place as "the Sawatari love hotel." In the model paarfi's describing, Sawatari is not the name of the kitsune clan (of 1490), just the name of two mundane brothers who happened to get very lucky (in various senses ).
Why is Megumi's (mundane) maternal grandmother running the Foxhole? After all, her connection should be even more tenuous than Megumi's: her son-in-law's brother married into the clan. This next is pure speculation on my part, but I'm trying to come up with something that explains both grandma's comment in the last panel, and what Megumi says in the first couple of panels of 1503. (Kimiko says "I didn't know your grand--" possibly intending to say "--mother owned this place"; that would make Megumi's "Cousins." interruption to mean "No, she doesn't, it's my Cousins' (presumably Mugi's kitsune cousins).")
Megumi in 1503 mentions a brothel in Kitami. Imagine a young Megumi's grandma employed in that or some other such facility owned by the clan. One day, as is one of the risks of such employment, she finds herself in an "embarrassing position" as they used to call it. The clan helps her though (kitsune loyalty? sympathy from fellow members of the profession, given it's not the first time something like that would happen?), and the child (Megumi's mother) is raised, eventually growing up to catch the eye of "one of those no-good Sawatari boys" (ok I totally made that last bit up ). Megumi's grandmother. for her part, has continued to repay loyalty with loyalty, eventually working her way up from the oldest profession to the second oldest: management. So she doesn't "own" the foxhole, she just runs it. (Mostly left to her own devices it would seem, since 1490-91 seem to imply great-grandma kitsune has better things to worry about, while Megumi states in 1503 that the kitsune clan more or less regard the Foxhole as a "joke", i.e. not just in name.)