Mail Fox Tales is an Urban Fantasy Webnovel written by Sani 2341, and posted on SpaceBattles.com (here
) and Royal Road (here).
It follows the escapades of Eva Mayer, a German exchange student studying in Tokyo for a year, often alongside her fellow Exchange student Kurt Wagner. Which would have been a lot more boring and mundane, if she hadn't tried to save what she thought was a stray animal on her first evening in Japan while drunk.
While she failed to save the Kami disguised as a white fox, her honest compassion, with her dying breath she bestows her powers, position and duties on the young woman. Who is luckily guided to her shrine, where she is introduced to an old friend of the late Kami, the Kodama Komaki, as well as two younger Youkai living at the shrine, the orphaned Tanuki Touya and the Yukionna Yukiko.
Among the responsibilities she inherited, the most notable one is to deliver mail to and for various supernatural beings living in Tokyo. Many of which turn out to be more exciting than one would assume the daily life of a Mailfox to be.
Between trying to understand the new parts of her world she has been dropped into and her part in it, keeping up appearances as a foreigner living at the shrine to immerse herself in the culture, and classes, there is little time left to be bored.
This webnovel provides examples of:
- All Myths Are True: Most, if not all Human Mythology seems to have some truth to them here. For one, Rattatoskr is a recurring background character, and there have been mentions of various Greek gods.
- Asian Fox Spirit: Eva, as well as the servants and some of the Inari she meets.
- Awesome, but Impractical:
- Being able to tell the quickest route to take for delivering something sounds awesome at first. That is until you realize whatever magic is plotting this course neither sees a need to point you to your actual destination by any means other than showing you the shortest route nor has any sense of danger or private property.
- Also the pocket dimension Eva refers to as the Fox Road, a seemingly endless path lined by countless Torii gates, allowing those able to use it to move between any two Shinto shrines with a short walk. If you have a way to tell which of the Torii leads to the shrine you want to arrive at.
- Being God Is Hard: Having to pretend to keep all promises and repay all debts (even those of your predecessor) is already tough enough. Add the fact that you probably want to keep the locals from finding out the local Inari they pray to have handed her position over to a foreigner, and being a Kami suddenly sounds much more stressful than one would hope.
- The Con: While not malicious, Kitsune have kept the ruse that they lose their powers if they break a promise, as well as the threat of imminent divine punishment to those that break a promise made to a Kitsune going since one of them came up with the idea.
- Deity of Human Origin: Eva.
- Early-Bird Cameo: That raven mentioned near the end of the first story arc? She returns a few chapters later and becomes a recurring background character.
- Eldritch Location: The Fox Road as Eva and the narrative refer to it. A pocket dimension consisting of nothing beyond an endless path lined with every Torii gate marking a boundary in or near a Shinto shrine. While an awesome shortcut, if you can't match a gate to the shrine you want to arrive in, navigating it is nearly impossible. (Though of course, some exceedingly unique Torii like the one-legged Torii of Sanno shrine in Nagasaki is easier to recognise than others.)
- Extra Ordinary World Ordinary Problems: While the story hands its protagonists their fair share of supernatural problems to solve, the mundane ones are still a part of it. From making it to class in time after dealing with the aforementioned problems to preparations for a traditional Shinto festival, everyday problems do still exist.
- Flashback: After the first chapter starts us off with Eva's new morning routine, the next couple of chapters tell the reader how she got into this situation.
- Foreshadowing: There are hints that Kurt is a werewolf sprinkled through the chapters before the actual reveal.
- Functional Magic: Magic in this setting is mostly limited by the users' mental crutches in how they learn magic. While it could do anything in a myriad of ways, many beings need to develop a way to envision weaving the magic together. Which often leads to the development of limiting mental crutches and blocks. The most common ways to go about these early steps are to either clearly structure how you do something with magic (allegedly the preferred way of human mages to go about it) or how to use an innate magical ability to achieve a different result than intended. Though even if you did manage to learn how to cause an eclipse with your mind, there is the fact that gods are real, and if Helios and Amaterasu already get into fights over natural eclipses, do you really want to risk it?
- Gratuitous German: Only present through Kurt's nickname for Eva, "Fuchs" (the German word for Fox). Otherwise averted for the same reason as Gratuitous Japanese, while the characters and the author are capable of communicating in those languages, many readers are not.
- Masquerade: There is one in place. Though the reasons why the supernatural beings keep it up vary. Many of the less powerful ones began to hide when things like the witch hunts began to spread. Gods often got fed up with non-believers treating worship more like a business transaction or lost their followers to other beliefs. What cemented the agreement for the necessity for a masquerade though, were the World Wars. If humans were capable of doing that to each other, no one wanted to find out what they would get up to when fighting actual non-humans.
- Our Werewolves Are Different: While forced to transform during the full moon, they can freely, if painfully, transform at any other time. They also keep their mind, though with a mild urge to show off.
- Physical God: While so far, only Eva, various Inari and Daikiniten were directly shown to be this, the way characters talk about other deities, heavily implies most are actually this.
- Secret Identity: More or less every supernatural being living in human society.
- Slice of Life: While it may not be fully mundane, the story is about the characters day to day lives, and at times the problems arising from the fact they are not human.
- Talking Animal: Ratatoskr, at least when he isn't too drunk to form words. Also, Eva and Karasuza when transformed (Into a fox and raven respectively).
- Unusually Uninteresting Sight: A foreigner dressed as a miko peeking through doors she shouldn't? Quite suspicious. That same foreigner sprouting fox ears and a few tails? Shows that there wasn't anything to actually worry about in the first place. Obviously.
- Urban Fantasy: Most of the story takes place in modern Tokyo, one of the largest cities on earth.
- Voluntary Shapeshifting: Eva as a Kitsune can freely switch between fox and human, and probably could do even more if she wanted to. Karasuza inherited some of her mother's, a Tanuki, ability to shapeshift, though so far she has only transformed into a raven and back. And of course as a Werewolf Kurt can transform from wolf to human and back freely outside the full moon. Of course, as a Tanuki Touya is capable of this too, though he has yet to be shown doing it, though the results have been.
- What If God Was One of Us?: To not die of boredom, many gods have integrated into human society. Some pretend to be their own priests and priestesses, others become CEOs. There is even a half-god working as a Professor for modern history.
