"Kamichu!" follows the adventures of Yurie Hitotsubashi, an ordinary schoolgirl who becomes less ordinary when she discovers one night...that she has become a goddess! Together with her friends Mitsue and Matsuri, she sets out on a spiritual journey to discover what her powers are, and learn important lessons on how to conduct herself as a goddess.
Synopsis: pandemonium91
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
4.8333 (moderate)
Reviewed by shoujoboy, Apr 22, 2007
