Ranked #1549

Kamichama Karin (Manga)

The magical girl genre is usually not looked by many, due of simple plots or cliche characters. Created by Koge-Donbo, Kamichama Karin is not your typical and simple magical girl anime.

STORY SECTION;
We have Karin, a 13-yrs-old orphan girl who is living with her aunt. Her aunt doesn't like her and Karin's only friend is her cat but later it dies. Poor Karin is left all alone and she only has the memento ring given by her mother which it later it transforms her into a God. And of course, she meet two cousins, Himeka and Kazune who becomes her new friends.

At first, the story sounds generic. Typical orphan girl has a magical ring, then she meet good friends and they fight together the bad guys. Karin and Kazune's main goal is to protect Himeka from the bad guys or else she will die. The bad guys aren't the type of villains to dislike because they are greedy for power but they are the type of villains who wish to protect someone like Karin and Kazune is doing. And by protecting their person, they have to steal Karin's ring. Pretty much, we have two sides of the same coin.

Like most magical girl anime/manga, Kamichama Karin is built on stand-alone chapters. We get to see Karin's daily-life moments by spending time at school with Himeka and Kazune. And somewhere towards the end of each chapter, the school president named Kirio (which is also the main antagonist), is attempting to steal Karin's ring in a Team Rocket way. No, there aren't any weird-looking monsters which Karin needs to kill. The fights are direct fights because as I mentioned earlier, both of the sides are trying to protect their important person from death.

Almost all of the chapters are like that but around volume 6 is when it is getting to the very main plot. The plot thickens, it becomes darker and quite complicated which it will surprise you. Some plot twists feel random and not many things are explained. However, despite the plot being all confusing and dark, Kamichama Karin lacks some originality. A lot of it's elements are taken from previous magical girl titles such as Sailor Moon and CardCaptor Sakura. Now, if this hadn't started back at 2002, I would say that it has stolen ideas from Tsubasa Reservoir Chronicle, too. Overall, I wouldn't consider this story that much of a dark one, due of the school life silly moments which 90% of the manga is.

The romance is quite shallow. There are magical girl anime/manga that have some great romance such as Wedding Peach or Sailor Moon, etc. but in Kamichama Karin it is more of a comical romance. At first glance, Karin and Kazune act like Sakura and Syaroan from CardCaptor Sakura but apparently Karin likes someone older like Sakura did with Yue.

The ending will surely leave you with many questions but the author created a sequel series and those questions are not explained again.


CHARACTERS SECTION;
All the characters are cliche and you can find them in any shoujo title. Personally, I did not like any of the characters and they acted so stupid at times. Even the villains that were meant to be 'bad' were comical and I could not take them seriously.

Karin - She is your typical teenage girl with huge eyes. Always lively, clumsy, silly at times yet everyone in her class loves her. She has no parents, she was disliked by her aunt and she has only a memento ring of her mother. Oh boy, how many other shoujo heroines are like her? Thousands, millions? So Karin is not doing anything in the anime even if she transforms into a Goddess. It is always Kazune who saves her from the bad guys. And yes, Karin is pretty much a Mary Sue which it will annoy you.

Kazune - He is the Kamichama Karin's Syaoran. Tsundere at first, he only seems to care about his cousin Himeka, (Meilin anyone?) but later he falls for Karin. Apparently, he can transform into the God Apollo through the power of his ring. Typical main fellow of a typical main protagonist.

Himeka - She is Kazune's cousin and the main reason of this 'war' between the two sides. Ok, while she was interesting, she didn't show any personality and things that involved her background were not solved in the whole manga. Himeka is just standing there without doing anything and Kazune is protecting her.

Michiru - Somewhat later, a mysterious student from England (Eriol anyone?) is transferred to their school and he is aware of the current situation. He is hitting on Karin and of course, Kazune is getting jealous. Another character that was left unexplored.

Kirio - He is the antagonist of the manga and the president of the school. But I could not take him seriously because the author made him so comical. There were times where he was joining Karin's company without anything happening.

Kirika - And Kirika is Kamichama Karin's Yukito, the mysterious gentle guy who Karin is fascinated by. He is also Kirio's brother.

And there are some other characters too, but I won't spoil anything. As you can see, all the characters are typical shoujo stereotypes and share many similarities to the CCS characters.


ARTWORK SECTION;
Koge-Donbo always make a very cute artwork but it is not my style. The characters eyes are just huge. All of the covers are fancy with vivid colors and it can easily fool you that it is an innocent shoujo manga. Apparently, the author is portraying her bishies in a cute way.

If you do not mind the lack of originality, Kamichama Karin is an alright read for one time. If you dislike stupid moments, too cute stuff, etc. avoid it. read more

After the wonderful time I had reading Pita Ten, I was compelled to seek out more of Koge Donbo's original work, so naturally moving down the line, I picked up Kamichama Karin. It started with all the best intentions; a comedically off-beat magical girl adventure... and then, dear reader, it slowly fell apart until there was nothing left to enjoy.

Kamichama's biggest flaws come mostly from the story. While the offbeat humor fits in well in the first volumes, it becomes increasing inappropriate as a more serious plot is built upon. Most notably, the cast's antics and the slapstick humor feel severely out of place throughout the climactic volume, so much that I began to wonder if it was in Donbo-san's contract to write jokes for every chapter.

But that's small peanuts compared to where they really dropped the ball. Koge Donbo forgot how to write a plot twist. More to the point, Koge Donbo forgot how to write a plot twist until the final chapter and crammed 20 of them into 4 pages without any consequences or significance to the story. Now I can swallow a lot, but this was just too much. It defied the laws of realism established by the storyline. Because the manga had good buildup and was intriguing for it's longevity, I won't rate the story too poorly, but the last chapter was definitely enough to give it a 4.

The characters were not much better. Karin was a fun ditz for a few chapters, but she never... and I mean, NEVER grew past that stage. She is constantly irritating, has an annoying way of speaking, and generally has nothing that redeems herself of her flaws. Rather than a main character, she is toted around by the manga-ka as a love interest whose only ability is to be ditzy, cute, and eventually nab her man. I'm serious she does nothing else.

Other characters were either incredibly flat, completely unbelievable, or demanded more time be spent on them. Villains are sometimes treated with gravitas but most the conflicts are jokes. The characters are supposed to be in mortal danger but there is never a sense of that in their fighting. The only redeemable character in this mahou shoujo farce was Kirika, if only for offering a slight bit of depth and a generally compassionate role for the reader; a drastic change from the rest of the cut-and-dry cast

At this point, one would assume at least Koge Donbo's laudably adorable artwork would save this. From the first volume alone, you would guess right. Her trademark style leaves fits phenomenally with the story she's providing, even though her SD-drawing hasn't improved a scratch from her previous work. All goes well, but as the series hits its final stretch, the quality of the art takes a drastic nosedive and looks like that of an amateur dojinshi artist attempting to copy the manga-ka's style. It's downright embarrassing that a manga could provide such consistently wonderful A-ranked art for several chapters and then just bomb.

Now finally, I didn't hate Kamichama Karin in its entirety. The ending was horrible, and apparently there's a sequel but after all it pulled in the final chapters, I doubt I can bring myself to give it a look. For what it's worth, Koge Donbo sets up a fantastic story. It's not too dark, has a good amount of humor, and falls together quite nicely, but the rushjob finale and lack of gravitas to moments of drama bring the whole thing down more than I would have liked it to. If you're a fan of anything mahou shoujo, I'd recommend trying it, but don't expect too much from it, and don't expect anything from the ending.

Overall, I give Kamichama Karin a 5 out of 10. read more