Anime Pilgrimage RTT

Kamichu! – episode 1

July 7, 2005 on 11:16 pm | In Kamichu! | Comments Off on Kamichu! – episode 1

“The Unkindness of Adolescence”

I hate it when I have no idea what’s going on after the first episode.

Essentially the same team as Read or Die gets together to make anime about a girl who wakes up one morning and decides she has become a god. She can’t quite figure out the god of what, though.

Yurie is convinced, for reasons uncertain, that she has become a god. Her friend Miko pays this no heed, but does concede that Yurie does look “grand” of late. Another student called Mitsue says that she has overheard them and is now Yurie’s best friend. Her aim is to use their lunchtimes to unlock godly power.
Yurie finds her power in the word “Kamichu!” which is a contraction of “God (Middle School) Student” … but unfortunately, it unlocks a typhoon and causes all of the local spirits to panic!

Kamichu! so far has very nice character animation, but it is rather slow and, presently, pointless. The local spirits that wander around look much more interesting and possibly a source of merriment: this is, after all, supposed to be comedy.
The best thing that can be said is that the environments are very pretty, but that’s because I’m a sucker for suburban Japan, as idealised in anime.

I’ll give this a couple more episodes, because I like the production staff, it looks nice and the promise is there. Still, first non-instant sale on the circuit for me.