You're watching a boy quietly befriend the exact spirits every Japanese kid grew up hearing about in their grandmother's stories. Suzu's deadpan reactions to increasingly ridiculous yokai showing up at their door are the real draw, not some grand narrative about spirit mysteries. The show treats folklore like a comfort object, not a puzzle to solve, which means every episode is just someone learning that the thing they were taught to fear is actually just lonely and weird in the most mundane way possible.

Kiitarou is a boy with an unusually strong sense for the spirit world. When he sets foot in a storehouse he was forbidden to enter, his family throws him out. At his new place to live he meets Suzu, a zashiki warashi, or house spirit, and he just can't bring himself to dislike her. Before long the two of them draw in all sorts of yokai. It starts with a nurikabe, a wall that blocks travelers, and a mokumokuren, eyes peering out of a torn paper wall. A yukionna chats with him, and akaname lick his bath clean. Told as Kiitarou's picture diary of his run-ins with folklore creatures, the short episodes mix comedy, romance and slice of life.