Story & Characters
You're an anime fan right? Well have you had your fill of the weird lately? You know, that Hayao Miyazaki flying fish
with a beard weird. Well how does a tag team cat wrestling match sound? What about a moose, a fairy and a rhino that
brings wish requsts to a middle school aged girl? How about a show that has a god for everything like the mouse you are
clicking, the monitor you are staring at and that burp you just let out? Need weird... here's Kamichu.
Kamichu is a charming little story of a girl named Yurie Hitosubashi. Yurie is your average middle school girl dealing
with her adolescent life of school and friends. Well she was, until she suddenly became a god. Yurie confides in her
best friend Mitsue about her new found power and of course, Mitsue doesn't believe her. During their conversation a
shrine girl named Matsuri overhears it and befriends Yurie immediately calling them "soul friends". She is
going to help Yurie find out what exactly she can do as a god. Of course the first thing she does is give her a godly
name... Kamichu, or Teenage Godess; loosely translated.
Kamichu's strengths are in it's charming and quite adorable premise. HOWEVER, charms can only take you so far in 16
episodes. While Kamichu does start out in an interesting manner it doesn't ever really accomplish anything by the end.
For the most part the show consists of Yurie trying to confess her love to a fellow classmate Kenji, her adjustment to
becoming a new god and dealing with the plots drawn up by her sneaky friend Matsuri. The problem with that is that you
end up with a very slow and fairly uninteresting plotline that only stretches each episode out to an unbearable length.
It has it's moments where you get the feeling it had the potential to be great, but never realizes it and stays within
its medicore boundaries of redundancy.
Rating: 5
Art
Animation for Kamichu is a mixed bag to say the least. On the surface the animation is heartwarming and colorful.
Adorable characters and vivid colors make this a feast for the eyes all around. Sadly though, the animation does fall
hard in three areas. First off the backgrounds all seem very prerendered. Very rarely will the characters have any
interaction with their surroundings, much like watching a live action play where the actors do their thing in front of a
backdrop. It almost sticks out too much when you have these lively colors and characters against a bland and lifeless
backdrop. The other is the character movements are choppy and sloppy. The mouths more often than not just appear to be
moving at random and when characters move they seem to be moving in a robotic and choppy motion. It won't be noticible
all the time, but when erractic movements are made it becomes painfull evident. Lastly, when characters of any kind
fall into the background, they become blotches of color with absolutely no detail. Faces will appear to be white balls
with dots for eyes and a nose and nothing more.
The animation is good and charming, but based on its technical merits, it doesn't fair all that well. Judge for
yourself.
Rating: 5
Sound
The opening and closing songs for the show almost feel as if they were ripped out of the 90's sitcom era where Family
Matters was the thing to watch on Friday night. The opening was fairly average for the most part and the ending was
just the same except that it had a nice touch with the way the animation actually interacted with the song. It's a
small detail that makes watching the ending sequence far more enjoyable than the opening. Background music was on the
sparse side and quite shallow when it did make it's appearances. I can honestly say even as I write this review only 10
minutes after finishing the show, there is no music that I can honestly remember right now... which is a
rarity.
Vocal portions fall flat as a board in that there is absolutely no versatility in acting outside of Matsuri. Yurie has
three personalities which all tie closely together; embarassed, whiney and quiet. Sadly that's about all you hear from
our main heroine and it actually gets the point of annoying when one whole episode consists of her whining. Her best
friend Mitsue and her love interest Kenji each have a very subdued and uninteresting tone throughout the entire show.
Mitsue is that reassuring best friend who is apparently devoid of any discernable personality and Kenji is that clueless
guy who could get hit in the head with a rock and never notice it. It ends up being one of those instances where the
boring story is made far worse by boring voice acting.
Rating: 4
Presentation
Kamichu is an unfortunate anime. It's one of those that as you watch it, you feel like you should love it and
appreciate it's creativity. But at the end of the day you are just begging for the next episode to hurry up as it just
proves to be boring as sin. Lackluster story paired with weak animation all topped off with substandard and dull voice
acting and music does this show in.
As a closing I will say this, many people have loved this show from other reviews. It is a rather obscure anime so you
dont' see many reviews on it as much as you would something else, but of those reviews none have rated this low that
I've seen. Maybe I've become entirely too picky or maybe they saw something in this that I didn't. You may love it in
the end, and if you do, feel free to come back and leave a comment calling me an idiot. Not the first time I've said I
hated something that nearly everybody loved *cough* Fruits Basket *cough*.
Rating: 5
Final Verdict
4.83 (moderate)
Reviewed by shoujoboy, Apr 22, 2007