Kannagi 01 - 04 - Hard Day My Game

Jump Starting the New Season

Yeah, the new season has started, I sorted out some problems, I am comfortable at University now, let’s actually get down to watching anime for once. God, I am a horrible anime fanatic. Well, anyways, about the first thing I picked up was Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens. (0_o)

First Impressions

I had no clue what I was getting into. I remember a few months back seeing some promotional posters for this and all I can remember was that it looked stunning, great artwork and lovely looking character designs. And that was all that I knew, so I picked this up on a whim and I struck gold!

From the very beginning, I was pretty much sold by the OP entirely; solid fluid animation, stunning artwork, catchy song, good choreography - I thought I was watching a Kyoto Animation work. So I was quite surprised to see that the production company was A-1 Productions who I hadn’t even heard of until now. Looking at their list of works, I can say this is their first work of this standard because Persona Trinity Soul never looked this good. 

Plot

So the plot from ANN…

An art student named Jin Mikuriya carves a statue from the wood of the Kannagi tree only to have the statue come to life in the form of a goddess, who has now taken over the statue. He and “Nagi” work together to destroy the impurities that are gathering in the town.

From a subjective standpoint, it actually doesn’t sound like it would really grab you, sounding seemingly cliche but I actually didn’t feel like that when watching this. I found this actually really compelling and I think it is mostly the characters.

Characters

So now, Jin is actually one of the few main characters that I generally like. He doesn’t get pushed around too far, breaks down realistically at finding out something really shocking and still has the right hormonal reactions (I was afraid we may have gotten another Kanakon shouta by how he looked when I first saw him). My particular favourite moment of his was to dodge Nagi’s diving hug… though if it were me, i would have taken that bullet. 

Nagi is actually a pretty likable character for me actually, although such selfish and dependent characters would usually get on my nerves. I am reminded somewhat of Kana, from Minami-ke. Maybe it is just me and I am already taken in by the dread specter called Moe.

Fujino! I guess hot nuns are back, are they?  Zange has that near perfect personality persona thing going on. Zange can be a bitch though and there were times in the manga when I could have easily hated her, but no… I am weak.

Definitely forgiven. Let there be doujins!

Tsugumi is cute. I somehow liked her more in the anime, maybe the voice acting tipped the scales. I really liked how happy she seemed when she finds out Jin likes bigger breasts and that she has bigger breasts than Nagi. The rest of the art club is a pretty decent cast too. I especially find Akiba hilarious. 

The Cut

So with my time being really precious now I got to make harsher decisions about what I keep watching. So like a hidden ace at a sports try out, Kannagi has just gotten a damn scholarship for it performance. Setting a high bar already, Kannagi is definitely on my watch list.

Let’s see how this goes.