Arai Tanuki

### Freaky Flaw

I cant control my shapeshifting powers, so one minute I am a human, and next I am a tanuki.

### Favorite Activity

I like to prank others sometimes and I love shapeshifting! I can also possess who I want and turn them into animals <3 I love being a tanuki.

### Biggest Pet Peeve

When people say I am a raccoon! It ruffles my fur so much! I am not a raccoon, I am a TANUKI.

### Favorite Food

I honestly dont know! There are many things that I like, but I have to be a certain thing to have :o

### BFFs

Kawa Tatoru

(Crossover Character Image by Bigrika) Arai Tanuki is the headstrong daughter of the legendary Bake-danuki, or simply known as the Tanuki, and attends Yokai High.

## Character

### Personality

Arai is a very strange girl at times, and often looks different everytime you see her or she has something new to tell you. She is very much of a mischevious explorer, who loves to know new things and places that no one else knows about yet.

She knows the latest japanese fashions before it is even in season, and she knows a lot of people's secrets. She knows all of this because she can shapeshift into different monsters and things, so she hears about the latest scoops and secrets.

She is also very know-it-all, since when people call her a raccoon, she gets into their faces and corrects them. She gets really defensive when people say she is something that she isnt.

She is also a troublemaker, a lot like the Tanuki from the folktale *Kachi Kachi Yama*, and she loves mud for some reason.

She also was transferred to Ever After High, to follow the destiny of the Tanuki from *Bunbuku Chagama*.

### Appearance

Arai has brown hair, hazel eyes, tan colored fur, small noticeable raccoon-like ears and a tail.

### Interests

Well, Arai loves to prank people and tease kitsunes. She also likes to shapeshift into different things to find out secrets. Also, she likes to make boats out of mud, referencing the tale *Kachi Kachi Yama*when the Tanuki made the boat out of mud.

## Classic Monster - The Tanuki

The tanuki has a long history in Japanese legend and folklore. **Bake-danuki** (化け狸) are a kind of tanuki Yokai (ghost) found in the classics and in the folklore and legends of various places in Japan.

Although the tanuki is a real, extant animal, the bake-danuki that appears in literature has always been depicted as a strange, even supernatural animal.

The tanuki of Japan from time immemorial were deified as governing all things in nature, but after the arrival of  Buddhism, animals other than envoys of the gods (foxes, snakes, etc.) lost their divinity. Since all that remained was the image of possessing special powers, they were seen as evil or as Yokai, with tanuki being a representative type. Some also take the viewpoint that the image of the tanuki has overlapped with that of the mysterious and fearful 狸 of China (leopard cat). However, since the tanuki of Japan do not have the fearsome image that the leopard-cats of China do, unlike in China their image took the form of a more humorous kind of monster, and even in folktales like Kachi-kachi Yama, and Bunbuku Chagama, they often played the part of foolish animals

Source: Here

## Gallery

Arai in Yokai HighArai in Ever After High