Kamigami no Asobi

From the perspective of someone who watched both seasons of Uta no Prince-sama, Kamigami no Asobi is a solid 6. It's by no means a spectacular show, but it does its job decently well in 12 episodes and makes for an entertaining, if not particularly fascinating, experience.

The concept is a unique one: Kusanagi Yui, a pretty normal Japanese girl, is summoned to a strange school to help teach young gods how to care about humans. In the first episode alone, she encounters many of her new classmates, as well as Zeus himself, the commanding king of the gods who created the very school out of ... thin air and can restrict the other gods' powers.

As the show continues, it becomes slightly obsessed with "normal" concepts, as Yui attempts to essentially teach the gods how to be human; this either works or doesn't, depending on the episode. Sometimes it can be very entertaining to see how the gods deal with the new ideas, with some of them enjoying themselves and others remaining totally confused. However, this also serves to erase any urgency that might've been created by the fact that Yui and the gods have only one semester's time to spend at the school. We know that they will be stuck there forever if the gods don't learn to care about humans in time, but there isn't any real worry about that goal being unreachable.

Around halfway through its run, the show's main storyline begins to kick in, with deeper secrets revealed about certain gods, all of which serve to lead up to the climax. This is where I personally became more disillusioned with the show as a whole, mainly because of its pacing and how the story was ultimately treated. Its largest issue is that it relies on emotional investment - it doesn't really have any impact if you're not invested in the characters, and although I was enjoying the show up to that point, I didn't really feel attached to anyone except my personal favorite god, so it was difficult for me to care about most of the story. This problem mainly lies in the fact that each god's backstory was featured in only one episode, and because most of these episodes were also padded by everyday "shenanigans", the backstories are rather simple and poorly fleshed out.

The characters are nice enough. None of them made an impact on me enough to be added to my favorites list, but I did enjoy watching some of them. Others annoyed me, whether it was due to (in my opinion) too much screen time or unappealing personalities.

A short rundown:

Apollo is arguably the most featured out of the gods. I didn't care for him, as his usual attitude is very bubbly and he tends to dominate any scene he's in; I also found his backstory one of the weakest, especially considering the mythology upon which it was based.

Hades, god of death, was my personal favorite. While he wasn't anything groundbreaking and only got one real focus episode, he was also one of the most entertaining characters due to his reactions to various situations.

Takeru was a Japanese god, and I frankly can't recall much about him. Neither he nor his quieter brother Tsukito impressed me particularly much.

Balder is possibly one of my least favorite characters in the show. I initially liked him, but suffice it to say that he plays a large part in the darker plot and ultimate climax, and that he's cast in a light that I found pretty out-of-character and frustrating. We are naturally supposed to sympathize with him to a point, but I found much of his eventual behavior to be either unsympathetic or just plain insulting.

Loki, trickster and friend of Balder, was conversely a pretty decent guy. He, too, is focused on more and more as the show draws to its close, and although I found his character to be around as shallowly developed as the rest, Hosoya Yoshimasa delivered an outstanding emotional performance that served to make me like Loki that much more.

Thor, Dionysus, Thoth, and Anubis are all more minor gods who also appear in various episodes. Due to their receiving less screen time, there isn't much to say about them, aside from Thoth being quite entertaining with his habit of slamming both hands against a wall / onto a desk / etc. in every appearance. Zeus himself does appear past the first episode, but isn't featured as much as I'd have liked him to be.

Finally, there's Kusanagi Yui herself; while more detailed than Uta no Prince-sama's Haruka, she's not an optimal main character in my eyes. She begins the show with a very decided backbone and strong opinions, standing up to Zeus himself and trying to deal with her new surroundings. However, as the show goes on, she just lets the gods and their personalities take over. We never really get to a point where she speaks up for herself and tells arguing or upset gods to shut up or calm down; she just continually makes weak protests or looks wide-eyed and worried. There are some points where I expected her to logically react more strongly, but she remained easygoing and passive. It's not a huge problem most of the time, but it did become frustrating for me as time went by.

The art of this show is basically easy to look at. Hair shading is an interesting, rather watercolor-esque style, while the character designs are pretty appealing and backgrounds are prettily done. There's nothing groundbreaking about much of it, but it is very pleasant. OP animation didn't appeal to me as much as ED, mainly because of a grittier and darker feel in the latter.

The musical score is relaxing and pleasant, with some nice flutes and strings used - not memorable per se, but then again it's been some time since I saw the last episode. I didn't care for the OP although it was catchy, but the ED stuck in my head after each listen and I personally found it a very cool song.

All in all, if you're looking for something light and fun, Kamigami no Asobi isn't a bad choice. It's not a masterpiece and has its few problems, but I also found it easy to watch and to comment on each episode. For me, it's just a cute, rather fluffy anime with characters that won't irritate you too much and a unique story.

TL;DR: If you really need a reverse harem otome fix, sure, watch this. But you'll keep on living your life just fine if you end up skipping this one.

L;DR:
Being lonely, bored, and deprived, I've been spending my time on watching shows like this: based off an otome game and extremely indulgent. At only twelve episodes, I figured I could knock the show out in a couple days and get some entertainment out of it.

I wasn't wrong, it is quite entertaining. Is it good? Um... no?

The plot seems a little more equivalent to that of a pre-teen's self-insert Percy Jackson fan fiction, but if you look ... past the quite frankly ludicrous premise, it's at least solid. Sure, nothing really makes sense. Why is there a talking stuffed animal? Why are the only other students at the school "spirits"? Why is there only one human girl?

We follow our main character as she pretty much charms a bunch of different mythological gods who conveniently possess the forms of good-looking high school boys at a magical academy where they learn... honestly, who knows what they're learning there. For anyone at all familiar with the genre, I don't think you'll be surprised by anything that happens in the show. It's rather predictable.

The art is at least consistent, the soundtrack is just fine, and some of the characters were almost endearing. Emphasis on the almost.

Do I think this is a life-changing anime? Nope. But, if you just need to kill a few hours while you play Cookie Clicker on a another browser, this might be a good choice for you.

Well, that was a lot better than I expected! I am an avid otome player and I've seen a few anime that have been based off the reverse harem ideas or games, and most of the time, they don't go very well (see Amnesia).

However, Kamigami no Asobi manages to pull it off a lot better than most.

To begin with, the story: it manages to bring together the plot in the first episode quite well. There are a few plot holes or things that weren't explained to the finest, but those are issues that can be overlooked because the series was so short to begin ... with. In addition to this, it's important to note that the series was mainly episodic. A character was chosen to be the focus and then elaborated upon for an episode or so. I'll come back to this when we talk about characters. The overarching plot was about the Gods learning to understand humanity, and the show does a pretty good job of displaying it, even if it was a pretty cheesy representation.

The art was great! I enjoyed how the characters were drawn (very easily distinguishable, but at the same time, not outlandish and crazy like the characters of Amnesia), and the backgrounds were pretty as well. I loved the night sky portrayals. It's also important to note that the God forms of the main characters were very detailed and beautiful, along with their specifically cultured dorm rooms.

The sound was fine. I was a big fan of any of the music, but at least all the voice actors were pretty good and none pissed me off, which is a feat, cuz I get annoyed almost too easily.

Getting back to the characters-- there's nine main characters. The heroine and human, Yui, is the central focus of our harem. From Greek Mythology, we have Apollon (was it supposed to be Apollo?) who gets a pretty deep tragic past that's a variation of a true myth. He gets enough development that he's fun to watch, but his motivations aren't always clear and his dialogue and actions are pretty cheesy and bland. He reminds me a lot of Tamaki from Ouran. The, from Greece, we also have Dionysus and Hades, who get little to no screen time, and whenever they do, they're used as comic relief. Personally, I wish they got more development, but I guess they were meant to be background characters and the series was too short anyhow. On the other hand, we have our Gods from Japan, Tsukito and Takeru. Both have their own episode to themselves, so they're developed well enough, though they're shoved aside in the finale for Apollon and the Norse Gods.

The Norse Gods finish off the series with a bang. Loki, Balder, and Thor were barely present in the first part of the series, but slowly began to make the scene until Loki and Balder were the main focus. Despite being close with them, Thor was ignored, and that made me a little sad because he had some real potential as a character. I enjoyed the Loki and Balder sequence (mainly cuz I ship them... a lot) so it was a pretty nice finale. I would like to say I was disappointed by Yui as a whole though. I know I shouldn't expect much from anime heroines at this point (especially in a reverse harem video game based shoujo anime) but I couldn't help myself. When she talked about swordsmanship, I got excited because I'm a martial artist myself, so I hoped that her character would be kickass and get the Gods off of their high and mighty thrones, but instead, the swordsmanship was used as a plot device to lure Takeru into the group and then abolished afterwards. I wish they had given her a little more umph, because she really did stand a chance at first. I didn't find her particularly annoying, but honestly, it wouldn't have made any different if she wasn't there.

As much as I liked Apollon, I also wish that Yui hadn't basically been paired up with him from the start. I liked him and Cassandra better, and I honestly think that Yui with perhaps Tsukito or Takeru might've been alright, if she had to have a pairing, though I don't think it was needed at all. This is coming from a person who loves shipping more than anything!! I just didn't feel the chemistry between any of the characters except Loki and Balder, if I'm being honest.

I enjoyed this a lot more than I thought I would, to be honest. The humor was pretty good (I have a strange sense of humor, and it definitely catered to it) and the plot interesting enough that I could follow through with watching it without getting bored. All in all, a good watch!

I would recommend if: you like mythology, you enjoy reverse-harems, you like it when a ton of boys fight over a girl, you like 'school anime' without traditional school troubles.

I would NOT recommend if: you're looking for something dark or angsty, you want a lot of character development, you're not a fan of reverse-harems or love triangles, you don't like mythology or mythical Gods, anime about friendship and sunshine and rainbows bore you.

Have a great day everyone!

P.S. In twelve, episodes, Thoth boxed Yui into a wall 11 times. Eleven times. Only once was it even needed. Just saying.

It's very close to being great, but it's hard to make a great anime that's based on a visual novel.

The animation is good and the episodes are entertaining, so if you're like me and that's all you really need then this is a really good time waster. But out of the 8 boys only 3 of them are really paid attention to and 2 of them hardly register as characters. The main girl also gets pushed to the side during the main conflict and her skills don't help in the resolution of the story at all which makes the whole ending feel weak.

I wish ... it had been split into two seasons so there had been enough episodes for all the the characters to be relevant in more than one episode, including the few side characters that were obviously only included because the people who played the visual novel would have been mad if they weren't.

Overall it's a decent show that I enjoyed watching, but I doubt I'll remember it for very long.