Okami-San and her Seven Companions is a comedy romance anime by the makers of Toradora, which is immediately obvious as both lead females look and act the same give or take height and clothing.

The story revolves around a society dedicated to helping people but asking for favors in return, sort of like the lowest, cleanest form of banking & loans, so it’s no surprise that the society is known as the Otogi Bank. The cast of characters is made up of a group of students with fairy tale motifs behind them from Western & Japanese stories; Main character Taiga I mean Ryoko is based on the Big Bad Wolf, while other leads Ringo & Ryoshi are Little Red Riding Hood & the Huntsman respectively and so on.
Episodes generally focus on jobs which are sometimes more violent in nature when faced with an enemy school, while other episodes focus on most of the characters deep & sometimes dark origin stories; there are also light hearted episodes which play on fairy tale themes such as Cinderella & Snow White; so we have a decent mixture of tones throughout the short series but because it’s such a short series there isn’t enough time to cover everything leaving the whole thing unfinished, also making the final fight with psycho villain Shiro an anti-climax, in fact the last three episodes are just one big confusing mess all together. A character who were supposed to know comes out of nowhere to train Ryoshi, while a plot to separate & destroy the Otogi Bank fails miserably, with the whole plot leaving more holes than Swiss cheese, and then we finish on a half-hearted love confession from Ryoko; it’s a poor way to finish and I hope for a 2nd season to fix this.
The characters are pretty decent as well, I find it strange that it’s called Okami-San and her seven companions when there are clearly eight, but I’m just nit-picking now.
Okami-san or Ryoko if you prefer is a classic tsundere but justified given that her backstory is rather unpleasant, she also wears the cutest ever boxing gloves known as the Kitty Knuckles. Ryoshi is a stupidly shy boy who could pass for Hinata Hyuuga’s twin brother, who is a dead hand shot with a slingshot and pachinko balls.
Ringo is the nice, yet devious one, Liszt is the president of the Otogi Bank who always has a hidden agenda and enjoys cross-dressing; his cousin Alice is comically serious all the time.
Otsu likes dressing up as a maid and always returns favors in a heavy OCD way. Majolica is just the mad scientist who sadly doesn’t get a backstory which is a shame considering her design is really good.
Finally we have Taro & Otohime who function as the world’s cutest couple, Taro flirts with any girl but will always be there for Otohime, Otohime herself used to be chubby and quite often bullied for it but a few nice words from Taro and not only has she got a lover for life but she turns out beautiful. It’s always hilarious watching Taro & Otohime on screen as Otohime’s way of bringing Taro inline is heavily implied to be good sex, as the narrator points out. Speaking of the narrator, while it’s funny hearing her snarky commentary in each episode it does however interrupt a lot of dialogue, this is the same for the subbed version which makes it even worst because you don’t always know if what your reading is the narrator or the characters.
Final Verdict: Okami-San is a very mixed bag when it comes to everything, the characters are good but use a few too many cliches and cookie cutter personalities, while the story starts off well it ends too quickly for it to make any sense. Finally the large shifts in tone between episodes are a bit of a distraction, not helped when the narrator is still being snarky. I’d still give this series a try, even if you don’t gain much from watching it.