I finally decided to watch Chiikawa because of Henya, there's some mild spoilers in my post so check the anime or webcomic first if you're interested
Here's a thread with lots of translated chapters from 4ch/a/
https://desuarchive.org/a/thread/276346429/ but personally I just downloaded the episodes on nyaa, they're about 1min long each
I mistakenly thought it was just a series for children about dumb cute animals doing cute things because the merchandise and most people talking about it only reflect that aspect (and you'll probably get that impression as well up until episode 16), even though many episodes are just the characters enjoying various foods and drinks there's actually many others with fairly mature/"deep" themes,
and some episodes are pretty horrific, I had no idea it was classified as seinen.
There are actually lots of cute moments but when juxtaposed with the more serious/disturbing/sad episodes and the scary world the characters live in you'll start seeing those in a different light and will start wondering what the fuck is going on, I can see why Henya likes it, she probably relates to the struggles of Chiikawa and Hachiware too. It's not really groundbreaking stuff though, cute setting mixed with horror has been done many times before but I like the way this series does it
I can see why it's popular but I don't think it warrants this insane level of obsession with all its merch, if anything it's kinda off-putting and gives a false impression, at least that's how I feel as someone who only saw roughly 240 episodes
My favorite character is the alcoholic badger dude