Kannagi - A Magical Maiden Comedy

Synopsis: One day, Jin Mukuriya had just finished making a wooden carving of a girl for the art club when the wooden girl comes to life. Turns out, the wood came from a sacred tree and because of its sacredness, it was able to bring the local deity into the human world. The deity introduces herself as Nagi and immediately, she becomes quite a handful for Jin, who feels like he had no other choice and has to let her stay at his house. Nagi becomes acquainted more and more with human society, causing trouble all the while as she also tries to continue with her deity powers to purge the land of impurities and regain the full strength of her god powers.

Other members of the cast include Tsugumi, Jin's childhood friend who has a crush on him, the two seniors who run the art club and like to categorize the males of the clubs into character archetypes, and Zange-chan, Nagi's rival who aims to be an idol. It's a pretty diverse cast that'll lead to a lot of interesting situations down the line.

Thoughts: Most "magical girlfriend" shows are pretty lame because the female characters tend to be doormats. However, Kannagi is different, partly because the characters personalities are so interesting and charming and the comedy is spot-on, brought about as a result of Jin and Nagi's interactions which provide for a lot of hilarious moments. To say that this series is "fun" is an understatement just because of how much I'll laugh during any given episode. It's a delightful series to say the least.

Jin isn't your wussy male character, Nagi shifts between acting like a spoiled brat (while being as demeaning towards Jin as often possible) and being all high and mighty (towards everyone else) while pulling out all manners of hilarious theatrics.

Basically, this is one of the stronger shows out this season. The characters and comedy are top-notch, the animation is gorgeous, and every episode manages to be entertaining. I really can't recommend this one enough.

Also, in before the "got wood" jokes.

Links (mkv format):
Episode 1
Episode 2
Episode 3
Episode 4
Episode 5
Episode 6

Jam it back in, in the dark.

Oh god, I decided to look into it and I have to say I was amazed by the amount of outrage expressed by Japanese otaku over such a trifling issue to the point that some guy decides to rip up his Kannagi manga. Way to turn this into a serious business issue

There's nowhere I can't reach.

Episode 10 is another filler episode, but it's by far one of the best filler episodes I've seen to date.

Spoiler:

Once I saw the topic of the episode, I knew it'd be a ploy for CD sales. But man, I just loved every bit of it and sat through this episode with a really big goofy grin on my face. Karaoke comedy segments don't get any better than this and the delivery was absolutely awesome. There's just so much I can say about it and how each character's karaoke performances were just so.... fitting.

Tsugumi wins this episode again with her moeness (no surprise there I suppose), but Takako just had me in stitches with her performance. It's just so disgustingly bad that it goes into the depths of terribleness and back around on the other side back to EPIC territory. Nagi also was outstanding. Of all the things she could have done... she picks that song? Brilliant comedic moment right there. Also, her handling of the sound effects was absolutely first-rate and added a whole lot to the comedy.

And the faces. If there was something I really paid attention to this episode, it was the characters' facial expressions. Among the characters, Tsugumi's reactions to Zange's machinations as well as Jin's preferences towards Daitetsu were utterly priceless. Poor girl, she tries so hard, but other people just get in the way.

And the ED. It just killed me. Christ, that was a perfect and hilarious way to end this episode!

Judging by how things are going to proceed, if this series does indeed stick out to 13 episodes, then none of the romantic subplots are going to get resolved. It kinda sucks that the ending might not be able to keep up with the awesomeness we've seen so far, but that's the way it is and I'm bracing myself for a disappointment in that area.

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