Yasaburō Shimogamo, a young tanuki living in Kyoto, is tasked by Professor Akadama, a tengu and his teacher, to deliver a love letter to his former lover, a young woman known as "Benten", a task that is no easy giving how dangerous Benten can be, and the confliting feelings that Yasaburō himself has for her.

Yasaburo visits Yajiro, who lives in the bottom of a well as a frog and forgot how to transform back into himself. When a storm comes, the three non-frog Shimogamo brothers race to help their mother, who is terrified of thunder.

In order to uphold a Shimogamo family tradition, Yasaburo needs to do what Yaichiro could not and come up with a leisure cruiser for them to launch. He asks to borrow Yakushibo's flying inner parlor, but ends up having to make a dangerous deal with Benten.

During the traditional Daimonji leisure cruise, the Ebisugawas come to pick on the Shimogamo family. Yasaburo fights bravely, but loses the Fujin Raijin folding fan. Fearing Benten's wrath, he goes into hiding after the inner parlor crashes.

Yasaburo had been hiding from Benten in Osaka, but thanks to Kinkaku and Ginkaku she catches him during a visit to Kyoto and makes him perform tanuki tricks for the Friday Fellows. It is revealed that Yasaburo's mother was saved by a man who gave her onigiri and also that one of the Friday Fellows, Hotei, has loved tanuki ever since he saved one and fed it onigiri...

Professor Yodogawa chases down Benten and Yasaburo, and they check out some autumn foliage. When she ditches them, Yodogawa has a lot to say about his philosophy of eating and Yasaburo also gets told a story about a conversation between Yodogawa and Benten's first tanuki hot pot victim (i.e. Shimogamo Soichiro), which he promptly reports to Yajiro.

Yasaburo, Yashiro, and Yaichiro convince Prof. Akadama to take a much-needed bath, but they run into the Ebisugawa twins at the bathhouse. After a brief scuffle it is revealed that Yajiro was at least partly responsible for Shimogamo Soichiro's death in the Friday Fellow's hot pot.

Yajiro tells Yasaburo and Yaichiro his account of the night their father was eaten. Later Yasaburo hears a continuation of the story Yajiro doesn't know: Soichiro bumped into Prof. Akadama on his way to the afterlife.

Yasaburo gets interrupted while warming his butt and sent to convince Prof. Akadama to attend the council where the new Nise-emon will be decided. He later succeeds in his quest for warmth, but over the wall splitting the men's and women's baths, he receives an ominous apology from Kaisei; her brothers are plotting something.

The meaning of Kaisei's mysterious apology becomes clear as the Ebisugawa plot to boil Yaichiro in a hot pot is revealed on the day of the Nise-emon election. The day is also the anniversary of Soichiro's death, for which it turns out Soun was responsible.

After Yasaburo gets a hand from Benten to escape Soun and his Elite Guard, the Ebisugawas manage to nab him anyway through a clever Kinkaku-Ginkaku plot. Meanwhile, Kaisei helps Yashiro escape the Electric Brandy factory and Yaichiro is handed over to the Friday Fellows as the primary ingredient for their year-end hot pot.

Yashiro comes up with a plan to get Yajiro back in the game, leading to the trouncing of Kinkaku and Ginkaku. Yashiro stalls the Nise-emon decision meeting while Yasaburo saves Yaichiro, but their mom is still in danger of becoming Friday Fellow hot pot.

Tanuki and human worlds collide as both the Nise-emon ceremony and Friday Fellow year-end bash descend into chaos. The scale of the disturbance increases when Prof. Akadama starts brandishing the Fujin Raijin folding fan, but by New Year’s everything settles down and Yasaburo and co. are able to calmly consider their hopes for the future.