Kamigami No Asobi Review

Kamigami no Asobi Review

Warning: This following review may contain spoilers. If you wish not to know some events in the story, or simply don't wish to find out what happens before you watch the series, please leave the page, since I don't want to damage a watching experience for you.

Also, please don't judge me just because I'm a male who watched this show. It's up to us whether we watch an anime or not, and I don't want any flame on here. 

With that said, thank you and on to the review:

Otome games are basically a penny just waiting to be tossed. Either you love them, or you despise them. Majority of the games that are made into anime are either done well, or poorly executed. I have heard of several anime that have done this, but I haven't watched one until this rolled around this spring. And what a fun show it was.

I didn't expect to enjoy this show so much for my first reverse harem, but I managed to. Turns out, going into the show with somewhat of a mixed bag might pay off in the end.

Story

Our story begins with the main character, Yui Kusanagi. After school one day, she discovers a sword planted into the floor in the storehouse of her family's Shinto shrine. After touching it, (because well duh, any normal person would do that) she gets transferred into a mystical magical world (does random sparkly hand motion), created by Zeus, the most known god of Greek mythology. He invited her into this new magical world (does hand motion again) complete with a school, lessons, and even a freakin' pegasus! Oh, did I also forget to mention several gods from the mythology, all imagined as hot teenage boys?

The real reason as to why the gods and Yui are all gathered here is because Zeus wishes to teach the boys- oh, sorry, I meant gods-the meaning of love in attempt to reverse the breaking bond between humans and the gods. If they fail to do this within one year, they will be shut into the world for forever. (Plays doom music) Which means they ain't eva gonna leave. 

The story for this series isn't the most original ever, as if has the same damn way of putting a girl into a situation where she meets cute boys through circumstances. At least the way is original, but it doesn't really help bring to story to it's main awesomeness.

The story also manages to focus on developing each of the 6 main love interest- sorry, I mean gods again, starting with episode 4. We each got to find out something new about them, which I really liked, with Takeru's being the best, even though they rewrote his back story a bit.

However, later on in the series, they tend to focus more on the friendship between the three Norse gods, and this is a negative if you want to get equal treatment between all of the guys. Though all the routes were pretty much connected to this, they only gave some gods 1 development episode, and they gave this 5. T_T

Besides that though, the story is very interesting, and will get you hooked for more by every passing episode.

Characters

Each of the characters, including all of the gods and their glory (in personality), all have qualities to them that make each of them special, and you can't really find any strong reason to hate them either. Then again, it's in your own personal preference, but I couldn't find any character that I LOATHED to death.

Let's start off with Yui, the main protagonist of the whole entire show and game:

 She's different then all of the other girls before her. Why? SHE ACTUALLY HAS A PERSONALITY! Thank you, Brains' Base! Oh, and Nippon Ichi too. What I like about Yui is that she's very respectful, and she's someone I would want to be buddies with. She actually had personality instead of being a cardboard cutout, and her interactions with the gods are believable, and not boring or sadistic.

Now with Apollon, more known as the Greek God of the Sun:

 Unlike a lot of the main love interests in pretty much every single ecchi show on the planet, he isn't pretty much PERFECT! *gigglegigglegigglegiggle* He actually has some depth to him, and he isn 't this one dimensional happy as crap character either. He's actually pretty lonely, after a girl that he loved long ago was so depressed when she looked inside a box that Apollon gave her (that could look into the future) that she killed herself. Since then, he's been looking for some actual friends. Besides that, he is constantly adorable, and calls everyone nicknames. (ranging from calling Yui Fairy and Takeru Take-Take, just to name a few)

Hades is next, the Greek God of the Underworld (mystery sounds):

Don't worry, he's not a bad person, he's actually kind at heart, and doesn't want to cause people to be affected by his misfortune. So he mostly stay far away, far far far away from everyone. Though inside, he does wish to become friends with everyone, though he has to take precaution. Thank god he's the first one to get development.

Next, is the Japanese sea god Takeru (it's actually Susanoo, but they changed it for some reason):

Though he does have some distinctive traits, he is almost the typical anime tsundere that has been overused to death in modern day. He mainly hides his feelings, acts coldly except to his brother, and doesn't really admit his feelings for Yui. He even called her weed at certain points (as her last name has kusa in it, which is weed in Japanese)

However, the reason why he treats everyone this is because of his past, and mind you it's sad. when he was young, a goddess that he admired feel off of a cliff, and he tried to rescue her, but failed. After this, most people misinterpreted the events, thinking that he pushed her off the cliff, causing him to be mainly ignored, and leaving him with the mind set that trust is for idiots. This is probably the most personal backstory, minus the main one. But even though they changed it, it's still a bit heartfelt and kind of sad to hear.

Now onto the brother, Tsukito (or known as Tsukiyomi) the Japanese God of the Moon: 

Tsukito is a type of anime character that I haven't had the wonderful occupation of meeting until him: the dandere. These anime characters aren't very the bubbly type, instead they tend to only utter a few words, and they aren't very sociable. He often takes a ton of notes, even though it isn't really necessary, as he sometimes writes down exact quotes from Yui.

Let's be honest though, he's one of my favorite guys. He for sure isn't someone you'd fall into insta-love with (right Bella?), and he seems to be the responsible guy that some people wish they could be. Maybe me a little bit, but he's also interesting because he's an archetype that I don't often come across. Danderes aren't often given the spotlight, mainly the tsunderes and yanderes are. Same can go for kuuderes, and you might take Takeru for one. But he's way more in the tsundere area, well in my opinion.

You could also expect him to be the younger brother, but he's not actually. He's older. In age, they are about 9 years apart. And I think you can guess what actor is older right?

Aww, I'll shut up now. We still have two more gods left.

Up next is Balder, the Norse God of Light (and later The God of Destruction):

Balder is typically the anime character that is the epitome of perfect. He has majority of the background characters that Zeus created following him, and can't be harmed by anything besides mistletoe. Hell, even rain doesn't fall on him! He's the god of light though, so I can't complain. However, underneath it all, he has a hidden power that is unleashed if he acts too violently. This could potentially cause the destruction of the world that Zeus created. He nearly does too.

He and the other Norse gods also have a close bond, but it's closer towards Loki and Thor. I'll talk about it later.

He is one of the characters that is mainly focused on towards the last couple episodes of the show, as his powers of being the god of destruction begin to awaken after getting jealous of other's affections around Yui in Episode 7, and seeming to want only her for himself, which causes Loki and Thor to get worried.

Oh, and also, he can be a klutz, as he can trip over ground when there's nothing to trip on.

Next up is Loki, the Norse God of Fire (squeals):

As you can tell, Loki is the second out of my favorite characters. I just love him so much: UGH! It's like an obsession because he is just so awesome.

A natural born prankster, he throws a couple tricks around in the series, such as giving Yui and Tsukito arm bracelets that had their arms linked, and not unlocking them until Yui and Tsukito did an act of true love. (This lead to some spying through bushes that only creative harem girls do best):

You know, trying to make sure you don't kiss or anything. What? It's a good policy.

Loki is one of those characters that has this instant connection with the viewer. For one thing, he's gorgeous, but then again, everyone is, but he's the most attractive. Besides based on looks, Loki manages to not fall into insta-love with Yui. Yes, that ridiculous cliche that is tossed around in paranormal romance like the plague? Yeah, that doesn't happen here. He only admits his feeling to Yui in his head in episode 8. Then, when he kisses Yui on the forehead in the final episode, the Loki fangirls be like:

But enough with romantic drama, let's talk about his past with Balder and Thor. Loki was mostly ignored throughout his childhood due to his prankster ways and only found solitude in Balder and Thor. For this reason, he feels like Balder shouldn't get close to Yui as he feels that he belongs to him. When Loki realizes that Balder's power is about to awaken again, he feels that the only way to solve this is to kill Balder with a mistletoe sword. He is unable to do this though, as he doesn't want to lose one of his only friends.

Then, Balder falls into the sea surrounding the land to kill himself as he figured it out (the plan to kill him), and then manages to start the final battle. It's better than him dying, because some of the endings in the game are SUPER heartbreaking (okay, probably only one) that hit me right in the feels.

So, as you see, Loki takes the cake on my guy I'd most likely date. Though he's a prankster, and entirely unpredictable, he's deep down protective, and one of the most matured guys out of all of them. He has one of those fangs to, so can you not?

Some of the side characters, besides Thor, Thoth, and Zeus, aren't given a lot of development in the story line. Dionysus, the Greek God of Beau- I'm sorry, I meant Wine and Merrymaking, is clearly only there to add more fanservice. Melissa besides adding a little comedy, vanishes through-out majority of the show. And Anubis only utters animal sounds. Oh ,and Thoth, if you want to keep slamming your hand to the wall, and lean really close to Yui, JUST KISS HER ALREADY!

All of the characters are great, and each have a quirk of their own. though having some of the sides developed would of have been a bit better to me.

Now on to the next section:

Animation

The animation for this series was done by Brain's Base, who have done more elaborate productions, such as Penguindrun, Blood Lad, and Princess Jellyfish. They are also known for more simple shows, such as My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU.

This animation is AMAZING!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I feel as though BB might have poured some heart and soul into this. All of the character designs look splendidly good (she also did Noir and Black Butler), and the backgrounds are most certainly great to look at. Heck, even the fanservice looks appealing.

However, there are two instances where I feel that the animators had an inconsistent way of developing clothes that just went wrong.

1.  Takeru's swimsuit

I feel as if there are instances where there is a line between making something look sexy, and make something look throw-up worthy. THIS. THIS THING. CROSSES. THE. LINE. 

Think of a bottom half of a naked apron, and then a loin-cloth over the private area. Got a image in your head? Yeah, that's exactly what it looks like.

Since I don't want your eyes to bleed because of this awful thing, here's a GIF from the moment when I looked at it in Episode 3:

2. Dionysus's god form

I know that he didn't have one in the game, but I feel as if it was sloppily put together. I'm glad to see that the animators tried to know well with it, but his god form looks so different from the others, and doesn't look as well put together.

Now, I want to talk about what might be on some minds before you start the show: how much fanservice is in this show? And surprisingly, it's not over-burdened like other shows. *COUGHFREECOUGHCOUGH* Of course, there is still some instances where fanservice does make a appearance, and since I'm a male, I want to talk about what parts had me react strongly, and some that I was more indifferent to.

Episode 1: The magical boy transformation of Apollon

I'm kind of confused as to why many people liked this scene. It was alright, I mean, it's nice for magical boys to shine, but it didn't really stand out to me. My fangirl urges didn't do anything with this.

The ending:

This is my first reaction to it, as I was really shocked to see how Brain's Base stuck this in. And LOL how Loki has the most non-revealing pose. CLASS!

Episode 2: The Hot Spring Scene

1. How were they able to come up with this? At least it's better than Ikki Tousen and don't show the boys in their birthday suits.  They were SO. FREAKING. CLOSE. To make a fangirl to have a heart attack.

2. THANK YOU BRAIN'S BASE!

Episode 3: Swimsuit Time

Yeah, I loved this. This was the most appropriate use of fan-service through-out the entire series, and the swimsuit designs were pretty cool, minus Takeru's. Anything but Takeru's thank you.

There are others such as you get to see Hades and Apollon shirtless (almost for Hades), and then see Loki's top half of his god uniform completely vanish. I'm not sure if this was a goof or not, but it made me react like this:

It was a little weird, I'll be honest.

But I still Brain's Base still could have done something to make the fangirls go crazy, and me a little excited: perhaps a shower scene? Even though I would get looked at like this:

Yeah, it's my personal opinion. PLEASE DON'T JUDGE! *runs away*

Sound

The score for the series was composed by the group Elements Garden, who also worked on scores for Bodacious Space Pirates, Symphogear, and Uta no Prince Sama. The music is quite memorable in some aspects, as it is dramatic and light when it needs to be. Sadly, I can't really remember it clearly, as the anime score is different than the game.

The opening and ending are both sung by the six main leads, being Miyu Irino, Daisuke Ono, Toshiyuki Toyonaga, Yuto Uemura, Hiroshi Kamiya, and Yoshimasa Hosoya. Both of them are very good song wise, though the animation in the opening isn't as good as the series.

Since this is a Spring anime of this year, the show doesn't have a dub as of now, but the seiyuus all do their best with the characters, especially with some of the more emotional OMG moments that the series does contain.

Highlights being Saori Hayami, Yoshimasa Hosoya, Yuto Uemura (I hope he's in more stuff), Toshiyuki Toyonaga, Miyu Irino, Daisuke Ono, Hiroshi Kamiya, Noriaki Sugiyama, Hirofumi Nojima, Toshiyuki Morikawa, and Tomokazu Seki.

Verdict

Reverse harem shows aren't always going to be the absolute best of the anime crop, but this is probably the show that I've heard is the least bashed. And since this is my first reverse harem show that I've watched, I'm not a so-called "expert" on the whole genre. But, with what little I can say I've watched or seen, this takes the cake for me.

I'm excited to see what the OVA holds in store, and to see where this franchise goes.

This anime is highly recommended if your a fan of reverse harems, or are just in need of a decent title.

Score: 10/10

Positives: 

Great variety of characters

An actual protagonist that isn't stupid

Interesting story elements

Nice music

Negatives:

THE UNHOLY SWIMSUIT!

Too much is focused on one particular part of the game