Name: Kamisama Kiss

Version: Anime

Genre: Shoujo/Supernatural 

Triggers: Transphobic slur

Thoughts: 

Okay, so this anime/manga, from what I’ve seen gets recommended to people who liked InuYasha, and I can understand why. It does carry a lot of similarities to InuYasha, but , in my opinion, it is able to stand up on its own.  

I do think that this is a fairly good anime. I did find myself laughing at a lot of the jokes and gags. (I probably still would laugh a lot of them if I saw them again). I am glad that I saw this. This is the first season, and the second season will be coming out sometime next month (January). I do, for the most part, like Nanami as a character. She isn’t “naturally gifted” with her powers. There are a few cases to where her powers kind of manifest—or something else—happens at the last minute to save her from getting hurt too much or worse. I kind of feel like there hasn’t been enough detail to say how Nanami makes her powers grow, and I really don’t like that. This is especially given that her becoming more powerful is kind of key center to the plot. For the most part, the show does carry a “problem-of-the-week” type of vibe with the exclusion of the developing friendships and romantic relationships. I do kind of like this. However, I know that this probably means that the second season is going to have something that spans three or four episodes too.

I do like the developing romantic relationships. Though on Tomoe’s end, there is the cliché’ of the previous, now dead lover, I’m not as bothered about that as other might be. On Nanami’s end, I didn’t like how she was like she’d wait for him to love her back. I would have understood or liked it more if she said that she would’ve loved him anyway and just admit her feelings rather than pretend they didn’t exist. Maybe this was just in the version I was watching. But that didn’t really sit well with me. Their relationship, so far, seems to be of the “it-wasn’t-supposed-to-happen” type and they constantly go back and forth (which contributes to the gags that I talked about). However, I don’t find their fighting or anything as bad as I’ve seen in other shows/anime. It, again, gave me those InuYasha feels, with the exception of the fact that it took the both of them a lot quicker to realize how they felt about one another. That difference makes me glad because that was a huge fault of InuYasha for me.

The other big thing I didn’t like was there’s this character who is androgynous(or very feminine), and there’s a point(or two) where Nanami calls him(and I believe that’s how the Wind god identifies) a “h*sh*”. I didn’t like that. I really wish they had taken it out. However, this is a common problem I see in anime with having androgynous, gender fluid, and/or transgender characters.

Other than that, I did like Kamisama Kiss for the most part, and I am looking forward to the next season and what it brings.

Rating: 4 stars out 5