Kannagi

Take your typical spineless male protagonist, throw at him a beautiful, immature and almighty goddess and the obligatory annoying childhood friend that has a crush on said male. Add then the evil twin sister of the afore-mentioned almighty goddess that dresses as a nun (because apparently Japanese people find that sexy), surround all of them with some potentially interesting, yet never quite exploited obscure secondary characters and wrap everything up in a fairly pleasant animation, with a commercial theme song. What do we get? Kannagi –a mediocre show that's not particularly bad, yet never gets close to being good either.

Kannagi starts off of an ... interesting premise –Mikuriya Jin, a high school student, carves a sculpture from a holy tree which later turns into the goddess of the area, Nagi. Because people nowadays do not believe in gods as much and because her tree was cut, Nagi is very weakened, and must get rid of roaches –erm, impurities. So far, so good. If only they'd actually follow that plot.
Unfortunately, Kannagi seemed to have decided that that is not a successful money bringing strategy, and resorted to your typical ecchi comedy/slice of life/high school anime subplots. You know them; Nagi living with Jin, pretending to be his half-sister (giving a chance to reuse the same over-repeatedly gag of other characters wondering whether they really act towards each other as siblings); the love triangle-square-pentagon whatever (after the presumably gay relationship between Jin and his best friend it really isn't clear anymore); and of course, the obligatory episodes of said genre –bra buying, karaoke singing and so on. Now these might seem exciting if you're new to this kind of anime; sadly, after seeing 20+ series of the same sort, you really cannot help but blame Kannagi for the lack of innovation. What about romance then? Pff, that's really nothing but a lame excuse to bring lots and lots of fanservice. Because why not?

In the end, I'd only recommend this series to people who are generally new to anime and haven't experienced all the cliches this certain genre carries with it.

Kannagi is a little deceptive kind of series: it may look like fantasy at first, yet soon it ends up a harem/moe comedy with insignificant fantasy elements, and well, it isn't nearly as good as some people make it out to be.

STORY & CHARACTERS
First, the major part of the "plot" is taken up by endless dialogues about nothing at the pace of a crippled snail. Perhaps, fans of K-On! and similar series may enjoy that, but I personally consider it to be nothing more than a boring waste of time.
Second, the "story" is essentially a generic harem with your cookie-cutter boy-protagonist who allows a girl ... to live at his place, and how that girl and two other girls compete for his attention. That's the base, and the authors apparently try to add some other aspects to make the anime more entertaining, yet that eventually turns the "plot" into a total illogical mess:
- the series starts as fantasy, with the heroine taking on the duty to destroy some shadow creatures because it's supposed to be a purpose of a goddess - to protect the land from the negative energy those creatures are made of;
- then this mission suddenly gets abandoned, and she starts rivaling another goddess for popularity, making the show a parody on pop-idols;
- then this plotline also gets abandoned with no conclusion, and the anime shows several comedy fillers;
- and then out of nowhere it becomes a serious drama.
None of those parts are logically connected, and nothing gets solved by the end, as the show has an open ending and no sequel whatsoever. Overall, it looks like those who wrote this "story" tried to appeal to different groups of viewers but totally failed to tie various elements together and make a proper conclusion.
Third, the only outstanding character here is Nagi - the female lead who somewhat reminds me of Holo from Spice & Wolf: she's cute, very likeable and lots of fun to follow. The other characters aren't nearly as interesting and memorable since they are only some shallow anime stereotypes that never develop into anything.
All in all, my experience with this "story" & characters may be described as boredom with occasional sparks of entertainment when Nagi comes into play with her tricks & shenanigans. Basically, she's the main attraction of the show and the only aspect I truly enjoyed about it.

ANIMATION & SOUND
The animation utilizes fitting colour palette and shows nice fluency of motion. In general, it's good but not really something to brag about. As for the sound department, the voice-acting is quite remarkable, especially when it comes to Nagi who sometimes uses archaic Japanese words in her speech: not only it sounds rather amusing, but it also might be interesting to those who study the language. Sadly, the musical score doesn't match the voice-acting: it's bland and absolutely forgettable except for the ending song.

OVERALL
The series might be enjoyable if you're ok with the extremely slow pace and the numerous plot issues it has (in other words: if you don't care whether the anime you watch is exciting and has a logical and conclusive plot). As for me, I personally like the comedy fillers: for example, the episode where Nagi locks herself up in the cupboard is very funny indeed. However, the rest of the show is pretty boring and nonsensical.

It's been a while since the last time I came across a show like Kannagi. Its most defining triat is that it fails to define itself. There's really not much to tell as the shows doesn't offer anything specific.

As a comedy there aren't enough jokes and the limited amount we get feels forced and hardly amusing. Shrotly put, the comedy is a failure. What about plot then? It's hard to figure out what the plot is suppoed to be about either. On the one hand, there seems to be mystery involving Nagi's split personality and her past with the main character. On the other ... hand we get a weird harem focused romance.

What is it then? A romance? Mystery? Harem? Comedy? Creators threw in a lot of various genres and tropes resulting in a mess that doesn't do well any of those.

I rarely drop animes but I grew tired of watching random events that aren't funny and don't lead anywhere. That being said I'm writing this review right after watching the episode in which Nagi decided to live in a closet because Jin did something terrible. Of course, the 'horrible' thing is something trivial but it doesn't stop it from being the main dilemma of the entire episode.

Good Bye Kannagi ,I won't miss you.

Not sure why everyone else acts like the show did a hard turn away from a serious plot into slice-of-life harem antics. It was pretty clear that the whole corruption explanation and goal of curing it was superficial at most, a mere excuse to justify what the story is really trying to do.
Nagi has a very cute design and the show contrives many ways to focus the camera on her legs, ass, and breasts. I'm also a sucker for girls in boots like hers. Since this is the primary goal of the work, by that metric it begins as a 10/10. Unfortunately starting with episode ... 3 it starts to introduce more characters and waste screentime on them instead. In episode 4 we meet her bitchy dominatrix sister, but she wears a nun-inspired outfit which is far less revealing. What was the director thinking?
Ultimately: 3/10