Kamisama Dolls

La la lalala lalala lalalalala.... 

This is Kukuri.  You'll be seeing it a lot.

In Karakami Village, a small town in rural Japan, are a number of ancient devices known as Kakashi.  A few special individuals, called "seki" are able to control the Kakashi and control them remotely.  Kuga Kyouhei is a former seki, who resigned and gave up control of Kukuri after an incident in the village.  He then moved to Tokyo to go to college and get away from the village.

 

 This doesn't last too long, as someone in the village accidentally lets slip to Aki, a seki and "friend" of Kyouhei's, who was imprisoned for going on a killing spree with his kakashi, that Kyouhei had left..
Aki then breaks out of jail and heads to Tokyo himself, while killing the pursuers the village sends after him.  The village, however, also sent Kyouhei's younger sister, Utao, who is now Kukuri's seki, to meet up with Kyouhei and recapture Aki... and so the show begins.

 Kamisama Dolls was a somewhat unexpected favorite this season.  The show had a good mix of action, drama and comedy, combined with a strong storyline, which made me look forward to it every week.  The one downside to this is that because the show is driven primarily by its story, you do need to pay attention to what is going on, and missing an episode (as sometimes happens at the TASS screenings) will easily leave a viewer without information necessary to continue.

If this show had any major weaknesses, it would be in the conclusion.  There were a number of plotlines that were not resolved, and, while it was a pretty satisfying end, it literally had "to be continued" written all over it. After the credits rolled, they included a next season preview and an actual "to be continued" slide.   The source manga is also similarly incomplete, so overall, I think I prefer an open end over what would likely have been a weak anime-original end.

This is your cue to run.