Finished a fun show: Kakuriyo no Yadomeshi. Basic plot: Girl gets kidnapped by Oni and dragged off to... an inn. A rather massive resort-type complex in 'The Hidden World', where Ayakashi/Youkai/whateveryouwannacallem live. Oni in question turns out to be a surprisingly civilized and gentlemanly sort... to whom her recently-deceased grandfather owed a rather ridiculous amount of money. She can either pony up the cash, or ... marry him. (And yes, she's like 21, a college student not a high-schooler.)
Needless to say, Aoi Tsubaki ain't havin' NONE of this. On the one hand, getting married to a guy who just dragged her off her front step is kinda skeevy. On the other, coming up with a perskillion bucks is not something a poor college student is gonna do off the top of her head. So after some tries at finding a place she can work with the other folks running the inn (who are none to happy to have this human butting in) she ends up finding a small, unused outbuilding with a rather nice kitchen setup, cooks herself a meal, shares it with a sympathetic local... and said local likes it. A lot. So she decides, what the heck, why not open a restaurant?
As luck would have it, she's actually quite a good cook, and (after a false start or two) things take off and she's wildly successful. She's making friends among the staff, the oni is remarkably less skeevy than first appearance and actually seems to like her, and we start detecting Plot Sign as various minor and not-so-minor things happen. The entire series is very slow-burn, gradually building up the romance between Aoi and the Oni, and by the time Major Plot happens, things are well on their way.
Needless to say, Aoi Tsubaki ain't havin' NONE of this. On the one hand, getting married to a guy who just dragged her off her front step is kinda skeevy. On the other, coming up with a perskillion bucks is not something a poor college student is gonna do off the top of her head. So after some tries at finding a place she can work with the other folks running the inn (who are none to happy to have this human butting in) she ends up finding a small, unused outbuilding with a rather nice kitchen setup, cooks herself a meal, shares it with a sympathetic local... and said local likes it. A lot. So she decides, what the heck, why not open a restaurant?
As luck would have it, she's actually quite a good cook, and (after a false start or two) things take off and she's wildly successful. She's making friends among the staff, the oni is remarkably less skeevy than first appearance and actually seems to like her, and we start detecting Plot Sign as various minor and not-so-minor things happen. The entire series is very slow-burn, gradually building up the romance between Aoi and the Oni, and by the time Major Plot happens, things are well on their way.