Kamisama ni Natta Hi

A COMPLETE DISAPPOINTMENT. A DEVASTATING DISASTER.

No attachments formed.
Full of plot holes, and it's "dramatic" impact covers for it's extreme amount of faults.

I feel sorry for some underrated animes with a rating of 7 to 7.30 where some of the storylines are good and has character depth than this one. This anime deserves a rating of 6.70 to 6.90 cause I think it's unfair for some animes (that have better writing, characters and execution) in par with this anime's rating. So okay IT'S A DISASTER.



SYNOPSIS:
At the end of the last summer vacation of high school, Youta Narukami spends his days preparing for ... the university entrance exams, when a young girl named Hina suddenly appears, proclaiming herself as the "god of omniscience." Youta is confused and does not believe Hina when she tells him "The world will end in 30 days." After witnessing Hina's God-like predictive ability, Youta begins to believe her powers are real. Hina, who is innocent and childlike despite her supernatural powers, decides for some reason to stay at Youta's home. Thus begins the start of their lively summer before the end of the world.


REVIEW BEFORE WATCHING:
When I watched the PVs, something struck my heart and it feels that it is ready for another emotional rollercoaster. I can feel light tears from my eyes and I can already sense that I need a lot of tissues for this. The soundtracks brought such huge impact and they convey feelings through music.

I have high expectations for this one. I am a sucker for drama animes cause I can somehow feel connection and emotional relation to them.

Now let's get to the point,
the main heroine, main protagonist and side characters are funny and they share a comic connection to provide comedic relief. The character introductions are interesting and I hope they would be a good contribution in the story/plot. Some of the characters break the static tropes and has very interesting personalities that could help for the buildup of drama, emotional resonance and depth construction. And the story of what is the truth behind Hina, remaining 30 days and her prediction ability, captures my attention and interest which encourages my mind to create such theories, enhance my predicting ability, assess my analytical and strategic abilities, and it helps me broaden my understanding, knowledge and capabilities in critical thinking skills.

The visuals are stunning and very good and the OSTs are heartwarming. THERE ARE A LOT OF SYMBOLISMS and HIDDEN IMAGERY from the OP and ED, and it is making me extremely curious!

This is just my temporary score and I hope the ending would give justice to this anime and raise its impact towards the viewers. I hope that the drama would be perfectly/neatly executed and I hope that the ending would provide strong resonance of connection, emotional tension and depiction of feelings towards the viewers. May you all have a good day ahead!

One of the most curious questions about mankind is how did we come to exist. Is it from natural evolution or is there a higher being such as God that created us? The Day I Became a God gives off a strange vibe but not only its title but also premise. What is this show that P.A. Works and Aniplex have bene working on after all these years?

It shouldn’t be a big surprise that director Yoshiyuki Asai returns to direct this anime original. Coming into this show, I am reminded of another anime that premiered nearly 5 years ago. Remember Charlotte? If not, that’s fine ... because this anime isn’t connected to that show at all. Still, that does raise some concerns as the director made some rather questionable decisions. The big question to ask yourself is what does The Day I Became a God offer for us.

To start off, this is indeed an original anime and is Key’s third project since Angel Beats and Charlotte. Watching the first episode triggered a familiar feeling with other Key’s works. It didn’t too long to meet the Key-style protagonist, Yota Narukami, and main heroine, Hina Sato. It’s like fate destined them to meet with Hina proclaiming herself to be a goddess. Claiming to “Odin”, she immediately shows off her God-like complex in a rather peculiar, yet comical way. Make no mistake, Hina is more of an airhead than some malevolent entity. Regardless whether you believe in her words, Hina’s hyperactive energy attracts all the attention in the show. Her personality equates to almost child-like behavior and it’s up to Yota to guide her. In essence, Hina learns what it’s like to be a normal person and enjoy normal activities such as eating with friends, playing video games, or visiting new places. The duo’s character bond is peculiar but it’s shown to be one developed with trust despite some of their daily mishaps. Hina also wants to help Yota in some ways such as trying to help him with his feelings towards Kyouko Izanami. It’s the budding childhood romance you’d probably expect from Key’s anime. However, this isn’t a Romeo and Juliet fairy tale.

In later episodes, we learn the truth about Hina. I’m not going to spoil the events but let’s just say that Hina is suffering from a condition that is far from normal. Watching her personality change is a strange sensation as the latter half of the show feels rather different compared to the first few episodes. Obviously, the director and staff planned this from the start and everyone’s reactions will be different. To me, the plot needed more than what it showed. The first half pushed the story in such comical direction that this show itself should’ve included comedy as part of its genres. Drama hits later into the story with the startling revelations. Yota’s desire to save Hina transcends his personality from a butt monkey into a more of a hero, one who promises to help his friend no matter what.

To be honest, I wish there could be a lot more to say about the supporting cast. When I looked over and tried to remember their roles, most of them really didn’t make impact. Even Kyouko and Hiroto didn’t have a role that sold me on the show’s story. I mean, we do have the typical best friend (Ashura Kokuhou) or younger sister, Sora Narukami for the male protagonist. However, the majority of the characters are overshadowed by Youta and Hina. Think about it, did any of them really made you go back to the story and saw them in a different light? The worst written characters are the adults in the series such as the CEO or Yota’s parents. They don’t typify the example of an important character. Only Kyouko with her background story and Hirito’s character role had some significance to the overall show’s direction. But even then, it felt so lacking and forgettable. I hate to say it but with even that colorful key visual, the characterization in this series just don’t impress.

Yes, before you ask, this anime is created by Jun Maedea, you know the same guy who also holds noticeable projects under his belt such as Clannad and Little Busters! His themes of family and friend bond is a recurring element in this anime. The character designs also reflect in his style with the cast giving off a visual novel-style look, especially for the female roster. Now, it’s obvious some people will say it’s generic but for what’s worth, the anime does have an appeal with its colorful attraction. From the over eccentric character reactions to some of the emotional moments, it’s definitely lives the standards of modern production quality. The theme songs also contains a colorful balance between the cherry upbeats and the melancholic tunes. And if you ask me, Hina’s voice can get stuck into your head sometimes with that hyper energetic God-complex

I guess it’s a recurring trend now. Every 5 years, it seems Key wants to show off their latest projects and here we are. Will we get another 1-cour original show in 2025? I guess that bridge will be crossed when we get to it. For now, this anime convinced me to keep your expectations in check and be aware that anime originals have its risk. The risk here? Too much Goddess and not enough goodness.

"The world will end (and surpass) in 30 days...in a common figure of empty, draining and manipulative-feeling rhetoric and hyperbolic sense." What happened to you Jun Maeda, the "god" that could do no wrong (well, Strike 1 for Charlotte)?

Jun Maeda: The Day I Became a "emotionally-pulling heartstrings" God. If you recognize this name even in an inkling of coincidence, he's the one who has produced instant classics of Kanon, Air, Clannad and few others. Amongst them all, the prolific ones are the 5-year-gap collaborations with himself, Na-Ga, Aniplex and P.A. Works, with the massively popular Angel Beats! in 2010, and the somewhat controversial love-hate relationship ... of Charlotte in 2015. Now, in 2020, after suffering from Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM) and recovering from a heart transplant in 2016, this human "god" is back with his 3rd collab project: implanting recurring themes of magical realism in a reality-fantasy dichotomy setting, and adding the "god" complex to present us this show: Kamisama ni Natta Hi, directed by none other than Charlotte director Yoshiyuki Asai (and wary people will have already speculated massive red flags at the ready).

If you know anything about how Jun Maeda's works go, always expect the shows to go ham at an unorthodox approach of similar and instaneously recognizable themes, and Kamisama is no different: whiplash-inducing tonal shifts between joyful times of (say) playing baseball or sad, depressing family bonds (with a piano), you name it, this show has similar references to fall back to the usual style of storytelling...albeit in a linear fashion of activities, comedic reliefs of jokes and gags to evoke the sense of oxymorons to seemingly unrelated series of events pertaining to the main plot. It's like this show is trying to be a Steins;Gate time mechanism-thingie but just couldn't pull it off, much less gracefully. This was the result of Charlotte's divisive ending episode that took everyone by surprise (at the time of its airing), but THANK GOD both the creator himself and Yoshiyuki Asai somehow learnt his lessons for this show...or was it?

The plot of this show, let it be known: everything about it is just as what you recollect of Charlotte, just pictured in a diverse setting of "The World's End": a group of characters just whisking their ordinary everyday lives, until this Odin "god" of a character shows up out of left field and exclaims that "You only have 30 days to live. And I possess the evidence to endorse my claim: my omniscience!" Imagine if someone told you that in real life, you'd be scrambling to have a plan to live out your last days, but this character cast just took that proclamation, throw it out of the window and said: "OK, we'll merely embark on our daily lives even if you tell us so, because that ain't gonna happen to us." And O My God, it doesn't take a stubborn mind to know that this will not be the case, and they REALLY "scramble" to do mundane stuff that could cost days or even up to a week max, because EVERYTHING IS RELEVANT and we wanna "celebrate" the passing of the world before the time of oblivion comes, happy or sad. Would you know it; everything is just an endless spiral of paradoxes pertaining to the lack of congruence and inconsistency of the former. Even if they managed to ace the landing, it's only a by-product of what potential this show could've had, it just had a very rocky story from start to finish.

For the love of God, we all know how much Jun Maeda has delivered his high impact rate upon the anime community since 2006 with the remastered Kanon series, and spawning his Key VN anime adaptations since then. The idea really worked well in the late 2000s and even onto the early 2010s, culminating with Angel Beats!, which was at the time, unlike anything ever seen in anime form before. The passion of the entire character cast and embracing each other like a team of comrades down to the final episode, it was magnifique bliss to see that each and everyone has a meaning and sole reason to live among the MCs, and everything was there for a reason. Charlotte on the other hand, was the start of Jun Maeda's downward spiral "black sheep" scriptwriting abilities, and stacked with Yoshiyuki Asai's lack of directorial experience (of which this was his debut directorial show), it was a recipe for disaster awaiting to eventually happen. And if Kamisama's anything of noteworthy, it's just a direct carbon copy of Charlotte, just only handled "decently" than the last.

You want to know what's been kept from Charlotte? OH YES, the one-dimensional, shallow, personality-devoid character archetypes are back. Right from the beginning, take everything about the characters in that show, and Ctrl-C-V into here:
- Youta Narukami is Yuu Otosaka, not like both characters are any better counterparts of their own show, and are more at times, an annoyance in and of themselves. A worse circumstance of the typical nervous self-absorbed tunnel-visioned wreck.
- Hina Sato is Nao Tomori, same personality, same features, same everything. The girl who has a personality akin to a raging female dog and the self-righteous kind...YEAH.
- Ashura Kokuhou is Joujirou Takajou, the sports-obsessed guy who always likes to show off and be a broski.
- Kyouko Izanami is Yusa Nishimori, the same one-faced innocent and popular girl whom is the ire of the MC's romantic "advances", and is just for show. There's no significance of the romantic sub-plot anyways.
- Sora Narukami is Ayumi Otosaka, the caring Imouto of the MC and while both characters are different pertaining to their roles in their show, it's just the innocent and stubborn personality that is a constant cop-out.
- Kako Tengan is a lawyer, and one in name only. She's a brute mahjong supporter instead, and is also just another character for show.
- Hiroto Suzuki is Takehito Kumagami, the background "helper" in discerning plot twists in their respective shows, and are simultaneously plot devices as well. Also, adult abuse is prevalent in the former's life.
Others are batshit, nothing noteworthy to be said: plot-for-plot, when you show up, you do your role as told on the script. Trust me, once they're gone from their scenes, I can't remember one doggone shit about which character(s) surfaces from time to time, and always having to pander the character list to identify who's who. So, so bad.

The formulaic model of Jun Maeda's saving grace will always be both in the art/animation and music, because that is the only thing that he does best now. First off, how can you criticize shows made by P.A. Works on the spectrums of magical realism levels of fantasy? Just look at Iroduku and Maquia, and tell me if those shows aren't high-calibre stunning productions of the studio in recent times. Kamisama is no different here with great visuals and vivid backgrounds that are more alike to Iroduku (in that regard). The same results continue with the music that he purposefully composed with Nagi Yanagi for this show's OST, and all the songs from the opening, ending to insert songs feels delicately made and warm-feeling to the hear with cozy feelings of nostalgia.

The Godfather of Manga, Osamu Tezuka, once said: "A good story can save poor animation, whereas good animation cannot save a poor story." and this is VERY true, even to this day. Sadly, the Jun Maeda of today is unsustainable, even if he came back from his heart transplant to concoct this story based on his real-life circumstances. We might as well call him: Jun Maeda: The Day I (finally failed) Becoming an "emotional tonal shift" God. The worst of the 3 collab projects, by a very long shot.

We've expected better, Jun Maeda, but this is just plain distasteful.

Infuriating. When I consider every aspect of this anime, that is the first word that comes to mind: The infuriating characters, plot, dialogue, music, art, and acting. It's fascinating. I never thought I'd actually find an anime so blatantly terrible that I cannot stand even a single second of it.

For some background, this is Jun Maeda's third original anime—if you're familiar with Charlotte and Angel Beats, you'll know his writing formula. His stories begin as comedy/slice-of-life centered around high school students; in the second half, an incident occurs. Everything becomes melodramatic—with a supernatural twist. In Charlotte, it was superpowers. In Angel Beats, it was the ... afterlife. In The Day I Became God, it was the end of the world. Like his prior anime, the story is much more complicated than just a gimmick. If you noticed the 1/10 score, you could guess this is his worst one yet. Maeda’s tropes and cliches were passable in 2010, nowadays this anime is a relic. It has the same sappy soundtrack, copy-pasted character designs, and sterile background art. It is like a knock-off version of Clannad your grandma would buy for you at a flea market.

Unless the character writing in this anime is a failed attempt at satire, I cannot fathom why they're so insanely stupid; their actions make no sense whatsoever. The protagonist is so blind to his narcissism that all his motivations and goals seem downright appalling and impossible. We don't really get to know anyone else past their surface-level problems or issues. It doesn’t help that the tone immediately switches from fun, upbeat, and childish to depressing and melodramatic cry porn that only a 12-year-old would think is profound. And on top of everything else, after not one but TWO mind-numbingly stupid "twists" (that aren't really twists since you can see them coming a mile away), it tries to shoehorn in cringe-worthy pedophilic romance. Because why not? Just throw more matches on this monstrous dumpster fire. To fully unpack what went wrong, we need to start from the beginning.

One hot summer day Youta met a girl dressed like a nun calling herself Odin. No questions asked, I have never wanted to punt a character down a flight of stairs more since I saw this gremlin. Odin proclaims the world will end in 30 days because she can see the future. She talks like an annoying brat, yet she acts condescending because of her supernatural abilities. Soon enough, she proves her powers are real by predicting the winner of a horse race. Twice. Youta quickly takes advantage of her powers by getting her advice on how to win over his crush, Kyouko. Since the world is ending, Odin tells him to confidently confess his feelings. He gets flatly rejected because Kyouko has no feelings for him. Inevitably Odin's advice doesn't work right away. Her powers only seem to work when the plot decides it. The conflict of the show seems to be convincing Kyouko to fall in love with Youta. He tries to impress her in a variety of ways, playing in a mahjong tournament, assisting with a dying business, and in general helping his friends achieve their goals and aspirations. It reaches a point where he becomes their messiah, at least that's what the show wants us to think. The truth is, the one who does most of the work is Odin, with her abilities to see the future. Her name is actually Hina, but she calls herself Odin because she's quirky. She also talks like a Shakespeare caricature to seem cute, but it just makes her sound desperate for attention.

Do you know that one guy who acts like they're the center of the universe? That's Youta. If one of his friends is going through a rough patch, he's not the first one who comforts them. But his friends are always there for him when he needs help. Whether it be studying, working on a project, or advice. The few times he emotionally supports a friend, he does it to satisfy his own ends. He only helps Kyouko so she will accept his advances. While his friend is going through life-altering trauma, he just monologues, "I thought she loved me, but this proves she probably doesn't." It's like he forgets he's the only one with problems. When one of his friends is suffering (and sensitive to loud noises), he yells, screams, and tries to shake them. When they're depressed, he'll get upset. Not because he's emotionally drained from supporting them, but because he misses getting attention from them. I wanted to reach through the screen and pimp-slap him for being such a tool.

The only reason why he has so many friends is that they're not real people. It's like they're programmed to like him. No one calls him out for being annoying. If he was a kid, I could've understood his childish personality, but he isn't. Youta is 18 years old, but he has the emotional maturity of a middle schooler. Youta isn't a person—he's a Generic Male Protagonist; He can't do anything wrong, he has a supportive male best friend, his love internist is nearly non-verbal, he has a bizarre crush on his little sister, and a quirky girl hangs around him.

One would assume doing acts of kindness would make him a better person. This is not the case. His development is stagnant because he never realizes how to properly treat his friends. Whenever they're in need, emotionally, he isn't there unless he has something to gain. He doesn't learn why his romantic advances keep failing, even though it is abundantly evident to us. Youta loudly proclaims his frustration in his shrill, annoying voice. Their whole relationship, and Youta's development, fall apart due to incompetent, ham-fisted writing. Watching Youta's desperate attempts to win over Kyouko, despite his repeated rejections, is infuriating.

Meanwhile, Kyouko is going through drama in her personal life, which Youta doesn't seem to care about. Their relationship was staler than a month old loaf of wonderbread. It was like watching two planks of wood stare longingly at each other, all the while we're being subjected to painfully unfunny humor. He's firmly set on making her love him—without really considering what she wants. At worst, he attempts to manipulate her for attention. Once, he fooled her into believing she was on the phone with her deceased mother when it was really just Odin faking her voice. It's fucked up, but don't worry, the show thinks this is cute! Thanks for that, Maeda.

I hoped Kyouko would've realized how much of an asshole Youta is, but of course, she did not. Her brief backstory was a nakedly obvious attempt to manipulate our emotions, but I felt nothing. We're forced to witness, I kid you not, a montage of cute photos with Kyouko and her dead mother on screen. I laughed my ass off. Why did we need this? For character development? No, that would be too easy. Kyouko suffers from a lifetime of depression due to being unable to reconcile her mother's death, and she summarizes it as just "low spirits." It's not. You're suffering from chronic depression, please seek help. Jun Maeda really should've talked to someone who actually has depression. Kyouko's entire being is unfathomably shallow. She is a trope, not a believable person.

Youta says all the time that he's in love with Izanami, but when it comes down to it, he doesn't seem to notice when she's sad unless someone tells him. Does he really care about her, or is he just attracted to her? When they finally talk, the show cuts away to something else because their relationship is suddenly unimportant. It never mattered. In short, the early show is wasted on pointless episodic slice-of-life comedy; it's not funny it's just tedious.

I assume Maeda also noticed Youta's lack of development and agitating personality because his "character arc" becomes irrelevant. As the days ticked by, marked by a calendar at the end of each episode, nothing developed. The dramatic stakes never rose. All we get are a few minor hints Hina is hiding her true identity. In the eighth episode, the entire three-act structure resets. A new conflict begins, revolving around Hina. The whole plot beforehand becomes irrelevant. The mysterious clues boil over, and there it is—the twist! This one singular moment throws all logic out of the window. This has to be the WORST twist I have seen in a big-budget anime all year. Once the final arc began, everything took a turn for the worst.

Suddenly the focus is shifted to a new character! Just what we needed! He’s a edge-lord nerd who isn’t around long enough for me to care about him. His backstory is meant to be taken seriously, but it is melodramatic and torturous to watch. I cannot understate this part; his voice acting is AWFUL. Listening to him speak, literally at any moment, sounds like nails scraping on a chalkboard. When he yells, it feels like needles are being jabbed into my eardrums. He is almost entirely irrelevant. It's obvious they shoehorned him in at the last minute, but why? More kindling on the dumpster fire.

I had hoped the second half would have some levity or humor to off-set the inevitable major tragedy (like Fruits Basket or Houseki no Kuni, which are already great works of art). Nope. This is cry porn—wallowing in its own crocodile tears. This is an anime studio taking what is at best an offensively LAZY script—the proof of this is that we don't get to know Youta really at all before the plot suddenly jumps the shark. Instead, we are told to feel empathy for him through the magic of cliched music and terrible voice acting. These are professional actors, but the writing sucks so much they became worse. For most of them, this will be the worst job of their careers. It's honestly such a horrible script that had I been an editor for it, I would've used it to prank Jun Maeda with the old "burning bag of poop on the porch" gag. Actually, that's offensive to poop.

Every time it attempts to be "deep," the dialogue sounds so saccharine and cringey. Reading the subtitles felt like Maeda ripped up a dozen Hallmark birthday cards and pasted them in his script. This anime is morally bankrupt because it takes trauma that people suffer through every day, then uses it as a cheap plot device to distract us from the shoddy writing. It wants us to relate to its suffering characters, but it doesn't make a dramatic effort to earn our sentiment. Instead, it chooses disgraceful emotional manipulation. I am both concerned and depressed that human beings could be tricked into liking this anime. It has no redeeming value, no artistic integrity, zero thought-provoking moments, and nothing that could be called unique or creative. The word original never crossed Jun Maeda's mind when he wrote this.

I could continue to go on about all the issues in this anime, but I will leave it at this. Please, people, I am begging you, don't keep the bar so low. We can encourage some fantastic, inspirational, beautiful, cathartic anime. They exist. This is not one of them. If you don't believe me, see it for yourself. You will realize this is an emotionless hack-job funded by investors who sold out for a quick paycheck. I cannot think of any constructive criticism for Jun Maeda, aside from renaming this anime to The Day I Became a Sell Out.

PISS OFF.

Okay, so hear me out. This is gonna be my first and last review on this site.

I've watched, read and witnessed all Key works up to this point. So far, my favourites always have been the stories that have been conceptualized and written down by Jun Maeda - long, developing tales that really make the characters grow to you and that make you feel things that you thought were uncapable of. That was the power of Jun Maeda.

Unfortunately, with the recent development of Angel Beats, Charlotte and Kamisama ni natta Hi, there is no longer the money and determination of having a proper setup ... for Jun Maeda's story. 13 episodes doesn't cut it, but hey, you could smartly arrange it and come up with an emotional impactful and fulfilling story, if you handle it smartly.

Guess what? Kamisama fails in all regards. The once genius Jun Maeda that was able to tell emotional and investing stories? No more. The only thing left that he's good at is music composition (he still is a god in that regard, don't get me wrong). I'm rather disappointed than angry about the show, because it could have been so much more. The first 10 minutes of episode 11 showed you, what the potential was - a gritty, close-to-life dramatic tale about a girl who tries her best in life. You keep this promise and thoroughly build upon it, boom, a solid 7/10. Good job Jun Maeda.

Once again, unfortunately, the first 10 episodes are completely wasted on characters that noone cares about, on plot points that seem random and keep being random just for the sake of being random, the same unfunny and completely mood-ruining jokes that noone cared about, plot points about characters who never appear again, different plot lines that are never built upon...

You get the idea right? If this were a visual novel with different routes and a true, final ending, this could have been very, very good. But nope! We just get over-rushed nonsense on top of non-sense that feels like 5 different Jun Maeda stories, accumulated into a single one and stripped by 95% of its content.

The only redeeming thing? The music tbh. The opening is very good, the ending acceptable, and everything in between is Jun Maeda - easy and memorable, not bad at all. It's wasted on this show. Utterly, wasted. Even the parts where it tries to be serious with itself, it completely fails by just pulling everything into comical territory. Tonal consistence is obviously an unheard concept nowadays. Charlotte was miles better than this, and even Charlotte was bad, don't get me wrong.

So, I can continue rambling on and on about how this is the most disappointing show I ever watched. And you know why I keep on watching it? Because every episode keeps surprising me and makes me cry with how bad it turns out to be. I'm not trying to be extra edgy or salty here, those are my honest feelings. I cannot fathom how any company decided to put forward a considerable budget and ressources in order to realize this project, the concept and execution seemed doomed from the very first episode.

I literally had a Jun Maeda bingo going on from the first episode, and we figured out the plot twist and the emotional climaxes of the story by the end of the first episode (!!!).
It's okay if you repeat your story ideas and concepts, Jun Maeda. Just please, don't do it just for the sake of doing it - apply them to the context of the story and have them make sense in-universe. Otherwise you're just ridiculing yourself and us viewers. I hope your next project will be something better, I still believe in the power and magic of your work. I truly believe and pray that you reach the magic again, that you showed us in Clannad After-Story. God bless

edit: typo

I’m not going to stand for this; shame on you, Jun Maeda. Shame on you for using the mentally disabled as a way to get your audience’s empathy. Of all of the possible story routes you could’ve went through, this is the most vile, most sickening ways you could’ve made this story end.

Story:

In front of Narukami Youta stands a small girl named Hina wearing a nun outfit who claims herself to be Odin or some form of god. She comes bearing a warning: “The World will end in 30 days”. And she has come to him hoping that perhaps he can help stop that from ... happening before his last summer break as a high schooler can end.

Given the absolute trainwreck that was Charlotte’s second half and especially its finale episode, I’m legitimately surprised that P.A. works gave Jun Maeda a second chance to make yet another show with Ayane Sakura voicing the main character. To put it simply, this show has very little understanding of how to structure or pace itself that I’m surprised this was greenlit in the first place. Despite the overarching threat of ‘the world ending in 30 days’, more than half of the show is devoted to never hurrying up or figuring out why or how the world is ending, and instead focuses on random bullshit that only pertains to the confines of a single episode before going onto something else that also has nothing to do with the world ending. Shit like Uno Mahjong, Ramen, and making movies takes precedence over the looming threat of the end of the world apparently. The absurdity of these episodic subplots takes away any and all tension that the show could’ve had and legitimately don’t make any sense as to what kind of rhyme or reason they’re doing any of it in the first place; they just kind of happen. As a result, a majority of this show feels like filler. Filler that goes on for so long that the last three episodes end up feeling like a completely different show that only tangentially makes sense in context to what we’ve seen before, but feel wholly disconnected because the whiplash from watching everything else prior makes connecting the two parts feel like putting a square peg in a round hole.

And it’s because of this kind of stuff that both the pacing and the worldbuilding of the show extraordinarily suffers. So little of the show is actually devoted to the climax or explaining the bigger picture of why this little girl has omniscience or why the ‘world is going to end’ that it ends up feeling like a cop out when things are actually explained. Cause it’s all done in these massive info dumps that end up feeling like they don’t matter because neither the plot or the characters are interested in understanding why things are happening, just what is happening. Which feels pointless because it begs the question of, “Why even bother trying to explain it in the first place?”

This problem extends further to side characters as more time the show doesn’t have is invested into creating backstories for the side characters that are only mildly important to the plot at the time. The show is only 12 episodes. Fitting things like that alongside 8 episodes of episodic slice and life, about 2 episodes of info-dumping, about 3 episodes of proper climax to finish off the series’ story and the forced romantic subplot only constrains the show even more than it already is. And personally, I think that’s where the problem lies. Kamisama ni Natta hi feels like it tries to do so much in so little time, acting as a Frankenstein’s Monster of Jun Maeda’s previous works as it takes bits and parts of Charlotte, Little Busters, and Rewrite’s stories in order to create something that ultimately crumbles under the weight of what it tries to achieve. Sporting an entire subplot of saving a ramen shop from bankruptcy takes away from the complexity of Hina’s condition and the further ramifications behind it since there’s even more stuff in regards to it happening even further behind the scenes.

Had the show been drastically cut down to get rid of all of its extraordinary and unbelievable elements and simplify it to a linear story that didn’t try to raise up stakes by bringing up the fucking United Nations, there’s a chance that this story could’ve survived as a digestible piece that could’ve narratively made sense. But as it is, the show would’ve needed at least twice the amount of time the show actually had in order to tell its story in any meaningful fashion. By the end of it, no part of the story much less its conclusion feels earned in any way, and while Jun Maeda is standing over this crumbling pile patting himself on the back for all of the risks and narrative genius/emotion he’s managed to get out of the story, I’m just sitting here wondering what went wrong and in what universe this could be considered competent storytelling.

Characters:

Hina feels kind of out of place. While she is the focal point of the show in some respect, going so far as to kick off the show by proclaiming the the world is going to end and calls herself ‘God’, the most she really does in the series is give a good kick to the plot in order to get it to happen, and then comment on the sidelines, letting her omniscience take over. She’s admittedly kind of a fun character given how she’s just this hyperactive brat that draws everyone’s attention to her (Like Haruhi Suzumiya in a way), but loses a couple points because the story kind of forces her to go along with the ebb and flow of the narrative. Going so far as to inject a romantic subplot regarding her which is only one of the dumber narrative choices this series has made given how she is factually one of the youngest members in the cast by about five years at least. As a character, she never really takes a spotlight until the plot needs her to, in which case it’s all hands on deck for the ‘deeper’ parts of the series with information dumps and an unearned climax that end up stripping her of anything interesting that she had before. Which is the greatest disservice to a character because what you end up with is character sympathy that comes from purposely gutting everything they were to become something else.

Youta by contrast feels like a visual novel protagonist with very few positive traits to go along with him. Aside from his initial affections for his childhood friend and a love for basketball, his character is almost entirely wrapped around the movement of the story where they push him from Point A to Point B in order to keep the story going. He has very little autonomy in the story, only having those moments whenever he acts on instinct and the story needs a moment of tension or drama in order to show the audience that ‘now is when things get serious’. All of this ends up making him a wholly unlikeable protagonist that similar to everyone else in this godforsaken show, just kind of goes along with whatever is happening since the story is the only driving force in this show.

The rest of the cast from its antagonists to its supplementary side characters and the ‘Friends we made along the way” end up filling a roster that only serve to move the plot along whether or not it be episodic subplots or to serve as antagonistic forces that serve as the supposed ‘end of the world’. There’s not really a lot to talk about them since their involvement with the story is dictated only if the story needs them to show up, and even then it’s more of a slideshow of all of the people that’ve been featured over the thirty day period, which feels incredibly superficial given how it makes the characters feel more like a collection than actual characters.

Aesthetics:

Well, if there’s anything that I can give P.A. Works, it’s the art. And I’m glad the show at least looks good. Yeah it’s the same style the the company uses, but it’s nice to see care put into the visuals of the series down to the smallest details like eggs being broken. Because that scene did not need to look as good as it did. The absurdity of the series also having a bunch of side plots also factors into this by giving the show a surprising amount of visual variance as a greater majority of the show has Hina’s omniscience portrayed in wacky and overly bombastic ways that neither had anything to do with the situation nor needed to really be there. But was appreciated since it took my mind off for a second until I realized exactly what I was watching.

Similarly, the music of the show also deserves some praise. “Kimi to lu Shinwa” made by a joint effort of our very own Jun Maeda and Nagi Yanagi is a genuinely good song that evokes the energy and emotional beats that I assume the story was supposed to try and hit. It’s a worthwhile listen to in my opinion, and I think it paints a nicer picture of the show at least at first glance. My only gripe with this song is the fact that there’s also a music box version, which is played during some of the more ’emotional’ parts of the show. And is played so frequently that it loses a lot of its luster and the scenes it’s played in aren’t nearly as emotional as I think Jun Maeda thinks it is. Same for the rest of the OST because the way it’s composed makes it sound like it only belongs in really emotional and important scenes.

“Goodbye Seven Seas” by the same duo hits similar notes and emotional points that its OP sister attempts to hit. And I think to a slightly lesser degree, it succeeds. And it’s for these reasons that I’m actually a little sad, because it’s kind of an unfortunate how these pretty songs are unfortunately tied to this show of all things.

Final Thoughts:

Given who was working on this show and the studio involved, I steeled myself for the almost guaranteed possibility that this show was going to end up being a narrative flop. Which is ironic given how I actually kind of like Charlotte until that series shot itself in the foot at the very end due to some scarily similar reasons as with what we see here with Kamisama ni Natta hi. I was prepared to be disappointed, but I legitimately didn’t think that it was going to go in such a way that would anger and frustrate me with its narrative choices.

This show is emotionally manipulative, trying so hard to make the audience feel sympathy amidst a whole host of other emotions in order to get the audience to feel invested in a plot that doesn’t even understand what it’s supposed to be. Every little backstory that the show sprinkles in is riddled with tragedy in order to make the audience sympathize with whatever plight the character may have, going so far as to do it for a character we just met like an episode ago in order to fold them into the larger narrative. It’s almost like the show is yelling at the audience to get/feel sad because this is an emotional show, when all it’s really doing is providing situational whiplash that I want nothing to do with because just last episode we were making movie references and stepping on their copyright. All to wrap it up in a supposedly bittersweet bow that pushes the narrative of ‘good memories’ to its height as if we’re supposed to forget that the only reason why we even have that as a narrative point was because you intentionally shot the series in the foot at the very end in order to force us to be sad and feel emotionally invested in these characters with at best superficial traits.

This heavy-handed storytelling alongside the show’s obsessive need to be complex and have completely baffling magical/extraordinary reasons in order to make the stakes of the situation have any kind of impact is my biggest gripe with the show and ultimately why I think it fails. You literally could’ve achieved the same kind of show climax by letting Hina get hit by a semi, but no, you had to create a completely new syndrome and bring hackers and the United Nations into this shit because that was clearly the most important thing that this show needed when it came to its narrative. All of this not even touching the fact that all of this needed to be set up, explained, given a climax to, and resolved in the span of about five hours and an in-universe time frame that ended up speeding through about two entire seasons in the year in around twelve minutes.

No part of me wants to remember that this show even exists, and the same part abhors from even thinking about recommending this to anyone. Jun Maeda and Key may have made a name for themselves in the early 2000’s, but I feel like at this point they’re just recycling narratives and running on empty on ways to produce any kind of story. It’s clear that Kamisama ni Natta hi was made with a larger timeframe in mind due to just how much content it tried to squeeze in such a small timeframe, and the fact that they even greenlit this idea baffles me further because I genuinely don’t know what they expected an audience reception of this show to be like given how strongly the show suffocates the audience with different reasons to feel bad about what these people are going through.

And if you’re just trying to force your audience to give a shit without a reason why, they won’t.

Look, I’m an anime fan, I like my melodrama as much as the next guy. You give me some Clannad: After Story, Violet Evergarden, or Bunny Girl Senpai and I’ll get teary-eyed along side you.

But the problem with melodrama in general is that it falls apart very quickly if the fails to make you feel emotion. This is ultimately the downfall of The Day I Became a God.

As you all know, this anime was created by Jun Maeda, the creator of many melodramatic hits like the Clannad series, Angel Beats, and Chrolette. Say what you will about these anime, but there is no denying their ... popularity and recognition within the anime community. However, the problems in these anime are only magnified within The Day I Became a God and their good aspects feel stale and uninspired.

The Day I Became a God follows high school senior (Youta) as he meets a girl with incredible predictive powers (Hina) over summer break, who claims that the world will end in 30 days. Over the course of this anime, we follow Youta and the self-proclaimed god as they engage in summer activities and unravel the truth behind Hina’s ultimate prediction.

There is a lot of interesting places that this anime could go with that premise. Add onto that some great art/animation, good voice acting (with some exceptions), and solid music, you have the makings of another Jun Maeda hit. But all of this promise falls to the wayside thanks to a bad script.

The goal of melodramatic anime is to get the viewer to feel sadness and sentiment. This is most often achieved through extraordinary circumstances and compelling, relatable characters. While this anime definitely has some extraordinary circumstances, the characters fail to make me care about their struggles.

Youta is a self-centered dumbass that never takes anyone’s feelings into consideration and just does whatever he wants to do. Any compassionate action that he does for others is not out of selflessness, but out of his own personal desire. For example, the first 6 episode of this anime is all about Youta using Hina’s abilities to try and get his childhood crush (Izanami) to fall in love with him. At one point, she is going through some really heavy stuff and Youta tries to solve this problem not because he truly cares about her, but because he thinks this will get her to love him.

If I could describe Youta’s relationship to the other characters, it would be how we treat NPCs in RPGs. You do things for the NPCs not because you care about them, but because they may give you what you want if you do. But the funny thing is that all of the characters in this anime aside from Youta and Hina are best described as NPCs. They have 1 or 2 quirks (if even that) and are at Youta’s beck-and-call whenever he needs them to do some mundane task.

Hina is not much better than these side characters, but she does at least undergo some changes throughout the anime’s episodes. However, she is just loud and self-centered for the majority of that time, which makes her hard to like. This doesn’t seem to be a problem for the characters though, as they all love her for some unknown reason and Youta actually seems to fall in love with her.

Now, just to remind you, Youta is a high school senior (18 years old) and Hina is a young girl (around 12 years old) so this relationship feels very uncomfortable. Some have claimed that they love each other in a sibling way, but this development only starts to happen as Youta begins to stop pursing Izanami, which leads me to believe that this is a romantic love. This disturbing relationship only distracts from the melodrama and does not make me care about the characters any more than the little I already did.

The characters are not the only poorly written aspect though, as the actual plot is all over the place. While Youta and Hina are doing their summer shenanigans, we get a subplot with a character that I only referred to as Hackerman that feels largely disjointed from the rest of the anime. He is introduced abruptly and is given way too much screentime for how little he actually interacts with the main characters. His struggles are completely separate from that of the main characters, so it all just feels pointless and like a waste of time.

As I stated previously, this anime does have some extraordinary circumstances in an attempt to heighten the melodrama and the emotional impact of the viewer. But including this is a double-edged sword, because if the anime does not produce an emotional effect, then the narrative is opened up to plot holes and criticism. If I am not busy feeling sad or sentimental, then the illusion is shattered and I notice how much of the story makes no sense at all.

The Day I Became a God suffers the most from these poor writing choices that ultimately ruined all potential that this anime had. Even though it looks good, sounds good, and the voice actors are doing the best with what they are given, none of it is enough to make up for poorly written characters and a story that fails to emotionally affect its audience.

It’s a solid 3

I probably should have noticed from a mile away. Its "interesting" premise of a mysterious girl followed by slice-of-life episodic episodes until its big twist and pandering for a few episodes until the story gets wrapped up quickly to its “emotional end.” But instead of an enjoyable experience, all you get is a bad taste in your mouth because you realize, what was the point of this show?

Oh, is this another Charlotte?

This was probably the one show that I REALLY wanted to like this season, and at the same time, the largest disappointment this season. Everyone already knows the creator behind this anime, Jun Maeda, ... his other works such as Clannad, Angel Beats!, and Charlotte, and even the formula he uses to create his material: the first half of a show is to introduce the characters, the premise, and exploring the premise in interesting ways. Then in the second half, pull off its twist and end with its climax scene to get the audience emotionally invested in the show.

Even though this worked for shows like Clannad and Angel Beats! because of the setting and slowly builds up the setting over time with a natural progression into its twist, for shows like Charlotte and his newest work, Kamisama ni Natta Hi, or, The Day I Became A God, doesn’t have this clear “natural progression” and forcibly takes us from the first half of the show into the second half of the show while interesting characters lose their initial traits and ends with a poorly executed twist because of how poorly the buildup to that climax was written.

As said before, the first half of the show is dedicated to introducing all its characters, explaining the premise, and exploring the premise in new and interesting ways.

To start off with Kamisama, the premise is nothing we haven’t seen before. We get introduced to our generic protagonist boy who acts as our stand-in character and our mysterious girl, in this case, Hina Sato, a self-proclaimed God “Odin.” And this mysterious girl, just like other mysterious girls we’ve seen in other anime, has the supernatural power of predicting pretty much anything correctly. We follow their two adventures with other introduced characters such as the boy’s childhood friend, his crush, his little sister, some horny TV host, but more interestingly, Hacker.

But unlike Maeda’s other works where even the episodic nature of the first half of the show was interesting and brought up interesting points about its premise (even if one of the shows, Charlotte, pulls off its awkward twist that disregards the first half of the show), Kamisama had almost none of that, and at times, the episodic plot doesn’t align correctly with its premise.

Even if some of the episodes were somewhat entertaining and stupidly hilarious at the same time, such as the beginning episode with the horseracing and the shogi episode, the one episode, and probably the most “popular” episodic, that didn’t make sense was the sixth episode where we get the protagonist’s crush and she manages to make contact with her mother through some makeshift telephone that has access to the afterlife and ends with a discount Violet Evergarden episode where the father and the daughter get together and watch a series of video tapes at certain times as a “farewell” message before she passes away.

At this point of the show, we should already be convinced that Hina definitely has some supernatural powers and can even be considered to be a “god” because this is utterly impossible because it surpasses the realm of possibility. However, we learn later on with the show’s “twist” that she was just sick and her grandfather implemented a supercomputer that allows her to make insane calculations in her head. Although the horseracing episode and the shogi episode make sense because they have bases in statistical probability and calculations, this doesn’t make sense. No supercomputer, no matter how powerful, can contact the dead. And if the writers expect me to believe that this was a “super-duper” powerful supercomputer that can do anything, oh please, there’s better plot consistency in The God of High School because at least I’m expecting everyone to have supernatural powers even though it’s not explained at all.

Even though the first half of the show was very hit or miss because of its plot consistency and its general entertainment value, in Maeda fashion, everything falls apart in the second half of the show. Our “big twist” is that Hina was suffering from a deadly terminal illness and her grandfather implemented a supercomputer inside her to keep her alive. A large corporation soon learned of this technology in Hina’s brain and decided to capture her and surgically remove the computer into her brain. The protagonist tries to open up to her and finally does in its “emotional end” bada-bing bada boom the end.

Although I’ll appreciate the transition was a little smoother than Charlotte’s transition (but is that even an achievement?) because we get a few episodes revealing Hina’s secret, the worst part was that all the characters, in true Maeda fashion, lose all their character traits and plot relevancy in the second half of the show minus the protagonist and Hina. The supporting cast are all irrelevant to the point of calling the protagonist at the end to supporting cheers of “never give up!” and “please bring back Hina!”

But probably the worst of them all is the most promising character of the bunch, Hacker. He was introduced as almost a “rival” to Hina and his small bits at the end of each episode we learn that he is a genius and a supercomputer himself, just not as powerful as Hina. He spends time trying to discover the grandfather’s secret and his work and discovers Hina and her powers. But at the end, all we get is a sob-story of how he was mistreated and abused as a kid and ended up simply being a stepping stone for the protagonist to go meet Hina in the hospital. After that, he loses all plot relevancy and we never see him again.

Even the protagonist himself ends up becoming really annoying during his hospital stay as he tries to “open up” to Hina. He never learns or accepts that Hina is in a terrible mental state because he keeps physically harassing her and yelling at her to do something that ends up with Hina screaming for help. Like please, someone told you that she distrusts men now because of her mental state, so why are you attacking her and trying to force yourself onto her while she clearly doesn’t remember who you are?

In the end, Kamisama ended up being another tragically painful work from Jin Maeda and P.A Works. Although it had spectacular visual art and animation that rivals any other P.A Works anime to date, along with its great audio design to try to make the emotional scenes impactful, overall, this show was a mess from start to finish with its contradictory plot holes, painful characters, and a painfully obvious climax given Maeda’s other works.

I’m honestly a fan of this kind of formulaic writing because it can bring some truly impactful moments with its climax, but Maeda missed yet again with Kamisama. Hopefully, he will bring his A-game in his next work and give us something that will truly be an unforgettable experience.

As of finishing the tenth episode everything has gone down hill and fast. As always in Yoshiyuki Asai fashion the last few episodes try and bring about a predictable and forced sad ending that ruins the main plot of the story due to its contrived and rushed nature.
The story is episodic with silly and fun antics based around the two main characters and the one's power to predict the future. This episodic nature is fine as it sprinkles a deeper narrative throughout allowing for the build up of a "sad" ending.

The side plot on the other hand involves some smart computer wise with the ... standard tragic backstory being forced to do a job that he should be able to leave whenever he wants but can't for plot reasons that aren't fully explained.

So many of the side characters should be in jail rather than taking the actions that they do especially for someone who is only a kid.

Art is standard and nothing to special compared to there better looking shows of this season and time of release.

Sound is good too as it comes from Satoki Iida.

Main characters have some plot and character development but not much and the side characters are one off for each of the shenanigans and don't get developed past that point.

I was enjoying the show but after the 9th and 10th episode it dropped heavily.

Overall I would give this show a 3 for its overall lackluster storytelling and characters that really drag the show down. I wanted to like this show but I just can't. Its another Charlotte.

Then we have this girl who thinks she is the god odin and announces the end of the world. Spoiler: After this she starts eating ice creams, being adopted without reason by the main character's parents, going to festivals and recording movies for her sister's school.

And i wonder, where does the plot try to direct us? There are 7 chapters and there is almost no indication of a strong story. This girl just appears (and it could be an angel, god, dinosaur, or asocial girl it doesn't matter) and although she warns the protagonist that the world will end, she does nothing more than have ... ordinary experiences with the rest of the cast.

It has one or two good emotional moments, but they are even cliché. The characters have no reason to be together, they simply appear at the whim of the god girl. In fact, most of what happens in anime so far can be found in any other average anime.

I understand that the creator of CLANNAD and Angel Beats! he wants to see us cry at the end, but how long do we have to wait for that? Most have faith in this. The error of this is to incite us to fall in love with the protagonists when nothing significant happens, not even the dialogues, less most of the stories that are only almost independent chapters of the experiences of a normal school boy.

Can you really say that an anime is good only for the end part? And there are 7 chapters, I repeat. The animation is quite good, although the sound is not spectacular either.

The only thing I find is an overrated anime full of common comic situations. I really expected the world to end and put an emotional spin on everything, but it's not what you expect.

This anime was such a dumbster fire. It was so trash to the point where I thought Jun Maeda's writing became worse after his surgery. It must have changed him because the script for this anime was horrendous. Let me start with the story.

1/10 - Storytelling/writing
The plot is terrible and trying to copy Clannad's flow. It ended up worse than I imagined. The plot was very generic and predictable and the "plot twist" was very bad because it was seen from a mile away and it didn't feel impactful more like a cryfest. They should've stuck with the world ending scenario, it would've been ... at least tearjerking seeing all the characters die. Also its writing was soo 2010, fun and giggles in the beginning and then on the later half comes with it's trash plot twist incident that felt incomplete. You might be saying "this hater just hating with backing up reason's why" let me explain. The plot is bad because you can tell he copy and pasted from other works and nothing from this anime is original. Its so pathetic that no part of the story had enough thought to it. Especially the latter half of the series, it was so unfufilling that they could've handled it better. Idk how but a part of me says its unfufilling. It's a feeling you can't explain
SPOILERS WARNING******
1/10 - Characters
revolves around Yota which is the main character and the world revolves around him by using Hina's powers (the girl who proclaimed to be a god) to his own benefit. Hina's power is to see the future so naturally she's omnipotent. He uses it to his advantage and tries to ask out his crush which is kyouko and gets rejected. So the power doesn't work right away but this dude keeps trying to get kyouko's attention not caring of how she feels. That's why the hate this generic bland main protagonist. He's a piece of shit that don't care for others. He's probably attracted to her looks and doesn't consider how she feels. Then we get her character arc and we get her backstory that her mother died and she suffers chronic depression but Yota didn't help her when he needed to until someone tells him directly. After he helps her and they reconciled, THE ANIME ENDED UP MAKING THE RELATIONSHIP IRREVELENT. SO ALL OF THAT WAS A WASTE OF TIME. Also its comedy is unfunny using the oldest trick in the book. Yota is one of the worst main characters I ever seen. He even yells too much for the dumbest reasons.

TD;DR: Trash carboard cut out characters with each of their stereotypes but not handled decently. Is what describes the characters in this show. It's so fucking bad that it's frustrating to watch this anime.

1/10 - Art
Don't get me wrong the art looked decently good quality but they didn't get to use it to it's highest potential unfortunately.

1/10 - Sound
The soundtrack was so fucking generic I swear. P.A Works actually copied Charlotte's soundtrack and made it worse. Nothing memorable.

1/10 - Enjoyment
I did not enjoy this trash not one bit. Felt like Jun Maeda was high while making the script. I can't believe his work now lost it's originality and am very disappointed in him. That surgery changed him alot.

1/10 - Overall
It was very appalling and I wouldn't reccomend it to anyone at all. If you wanna watch actual sad animes I reccomend you to watch Clannad, Angel Beats, Your Lie in April, Anohana, Charlotte, and I want to eat your pancreas. All of them are actually written well and have better characters than this abomination.

Oh Jun Maeda, despite our hopes it turns out you have only gotten worse in the last ten years.

Jun Maeda is a fascinating figure in the industry, partially because he worked in the Visual Novel scene for so long before writing anime (he still does technically), but mainly because he is one of the very few anime screen writers known by name outside of Mari Okada and Urobutchi Gen. And for good reason too: Air, Kanon, Clannad, Angel Beats, Little Busters, Charlotte; Jun Maeda is the mind behind some of the most popular and well acclaimed anime of all time. Jun Maeda also composes ... the music for his works so some of the tracks he's written have become permanently etched onto the eardrums of otakus everywhere over the course of the 15 years since his works started to be adapted.

Unfortunately it seems as if Jun Maeda even after writing six successful major works still hasn't been able to effectively create, in my opinion, the insane magnum opus that I believe he can.

To begin, I want to say of his work I have seen Angel Beats and Clannad, I think the former is genuinely great and I absolutely detest the latter. I will be using both in this review but spoiling neither. With that out of the way, let's begin.

Part 1: The Good

If I had to say what makes 2010's Angel Beats so good I would have to say that it's because the show focuses on all of Jun Maeda's strengths as an anime writer. Over the top zany slapstick combined with breakneck paced dialogue with just enough of a wink and a nod creates one of the most popular works of the decade. It's not surprise to me that Angel Beats is considered an essential watch if you're an anime fan even if you don't end up liking it.

Kamisama ni Natta hi carries over many of those strengths with its own unique twist, Hina and Narukami. Hina being the Chunni that she is and Narukami being the hapless but really talented actor he is, as a team pull off a number of hi jinks throughout much of the series that contain a great deal humor that most people can enjoy—And this carries most of the show.
Visually the show is solid, while I'm not big on the character design of Yota, the rest of the designs are interesting—and the compositing on the show is pretty good and the colors suit the show very well. While you could accuse PA Works for trying to LARP Kyoani with the production of Angel Beats, I think Kamisama ni Natta hi is more in line with what contemporary anime looks like, for better and for worse.

The music is also fairly solid, Jun Maeda as a composer hasn't failed so far, so with a pretty good OP and a decent ED, there are at least some things form this show that one will wish to remember.

There is also episode 5, despite coming out of nowhere, was surprisingly well done and a welcome mid season dramatic episode to take a breather from the comedy.
But honestly that's kind of it for the good. Hina is a good character and Narukami is good for most of it. The rest it doesn't mess up until much later but first something else must be covered.

Part 2: The bad (Namely the characters)

So I will be honest, Jun Maeda is the kind of writer that has fun or interesting ideas for characters but for much of the time fails to properly flesh those characters out. His work contains an ensemble cast of some sort but only maybe a few get any sort of depth, if that depth is even capitalized on. That was my main critique of Angel Beats and it's my main complaint now. This I attribute largely to his experience as a VN writer where you can craft a 50+ hour game that can properly characterize each member of the cast and can therefore more easily set up the payoff for the key emotional moments throughout the story. But despite having written two anime original productions prior and probably having heard those same critique before, Jun Maeda does that same thing again.

For example Ms. Tengan is intially set up as a bit character but is eventually becomes a part of the main roster, she even appears in the the main Key Visual you see on MAL! But.... she doesn't do anything, at least of substance. She does things in the show, and has lines and feelings about other characters, but she doesn't have an arc or get an indepth back story. None of the core elements of her character is explored in interesting ways outside of her introductary episode. In short, she turns out to be uninteresting. And while the size of the cast would be fine in a VN (seven, eight if you count Suzuki who does his own thing) in a one cour anime you have to be much more focused.

They spend 33 episodes of Clannad building up and characterizing the cast and more importantly the main character Okazaki so you can be invested in After Story. Unfortunately I find that Clannad (especially S1) fails at this spectacularly, on top of being boring. But I think most of the cast was explored to the depth they had, which wasn't a lot but it was explored. Kamisama ni Natta hi doesn't even bother, it's mainly Youta, Hina, Izanami, and that's it. Which makes much of the show feel empty, you have: The VN best friend, the Imouto who talks funny, the milf, and the restaurant owner who acts cute, that's it. None of the characters I just listed get a ton of backstory or interesting details shown about them, they are there to fill up space. Making you feel like a moron when you expect the characters to actually matter.

And then there's Suzuki but honestly I don't know what to say about him, he did his thing in the story and left, he has characterization and a backstory but the pay off wasn't as good as it could be. Ultimately I feel neutral about his entire involvement with the story.

Now if that were it in terms of problems with this show I wouldn't have written a review but then there is something else that demands attention.

Part 3: The Ending (spoilers, check farther down to see non-spoilers)

I know Jun Maeda can end his shows at least decently even if they are cut short, look at Angel Beats, why does it feel like he's regressed since then?! The last two episodes of Kamisama ni Natta hi basically abandon all of the subplots in favor of Youta essentially going down the "Hina Route." Since his works still function similarly to VN's with routes, and specific endings to the routes, which is ultimately why the romance with Izanami dries up and dies and Youta falls in love with Hina for no reason (Bear in mind she's eight years old). The dramatic change in setting ultimately turns Youta into a moron, effectively neutering all of the characterization he had over the course of the show, which essentially makes Youta no different than any other mc found in anime or VN's. and contrives this really irritating scenario where Hina has essentially become mentally and physically disabled and now you just sit there and be annoyed or sad. It is extremely manipulative, and predictable if you've seen Jun Maeda's other works. As well there is a pediatric nurse who is portrayed as a villain but ultimately her character is unlikable and annoying. She is straddles that line between cartoonishly selfish and being a normal character with motivations but I just hate her every time she is on screen. It also irritates me that Youta gets caught for faking his status as a medical researcher because Suzuki never bothered to let him know that had to edit the reports himself or act in accordance to them everyday? I think there is supposed to be commentary on the way we treat the disabled but none of it any of it goes anywhere. Everything in the show essentially becomes stupider and less interesting over time, a massive disappointment.

*End of Spoiler Section*

Ultimately I would only recommend Kamisama ni Natta hi if you are interested in following Jun Maeda's career and seeing if he will changed as a writer after this show. It potentially could be the lowest rated thing he has written on MAL so far and honestly it deserves it. I don't hate Jun Maeda like some but for the love of Fuuko could you please either learn to write shows that are more concise and finish them? or try to convince some producer to make a longer anime original project? You would be doing yourself and the world a service.

This is my second Jun Maeda anime, the first was Angel Beats, which at least has decent comedy and some heartwarming moments, but Kamisama Ni Natta Hi has nothing good to offer us.

Story (1): This was the worst story of the year. The first half is just boring Sol that at moments I even can't stand it. The second half is some kind of Sci-drama without good background.

Art (3): The art quality is really bad if you compare it with another P.A animes this lack of details and vibrant colors. In animation is really bad too, some movements and sequences lack fluidity, this worries me ... because is an anime of 2020 and looks like a mid-2000 anime in animation terms.

Sound (8): The music is a strong point, but they just repeat the same melodies and overuse their only good resource just to force some scenes to be sad.

Character (1): Is painful to see the main character, is too stereotypical and their interactions with the cast are forced to the friendship without organicity. The god is too annoying because her delusions are too frequent and their lines lack creativity, is just a repeat of the same formula. The second half is worse with the computers boy, that guy doesn't have a personality.

Enjoyment (1): I didn't laugh when was supposed to do it. I didn't even feel sad in the saddest moments.

Overall (2): Was a waste of time. I have a lot of time so I don't care about that, to be honest, but this is that kind of anime that I will not remember.

This is all, sorry for my bad grammar or anything because my first language is Spanish. Have a nice day and see you in another review.

I came here to warn people about this hoax, but after reading some reviews of my fellow companions, I've decided to keep it short. Shorter..
Don't waste your time. You know that "you should watch it and decide for yourself"? It doesn't apply here. Seriously. I've seen reviews with ratings of 7, 9. even 10!?! WTF?!? It made me think we haven't all watched the same anime. Fortunately, most of the reviewers got it right: 1. And that was a mercy. I gave a rating of 2 'cause I'm a sucker for visuals.(And some of it really caught my eye). But ... still not worth watching. Plus, I really hate these kind of stories: annoying af (loli) nun with "powers", mc starts to care (or even falls) for her, even though there are better girls around. Yeah, I'm looking at you, Toaru Majutsu no Index.
Still here? Fine.
Lousy plot. In the sense that there isn't one. Not a viable one. Yeah, sure, some funny scenes, but still not good enough or a lot of them to help a lil' bit.
Visuals? Sure, some.
Soundtrack? OP, ED? I came here after watching it 20 min ago and, I kid you not, I can't remember those. Oh, and that lousy piano part in the 3rd episode? Or was it 4th? Trying to get the feelings moving. And failing. Oh, and speaking of the author trying to trick you, the scenes collage of Kyouko and her mom... I'm sure it was meant to get at least a tear out of my/our eyes. All it got was me, looking mentally drained. Oh, there was a photo there that caught my eye: them both at the beach, i think. And I was thinking "Really? You couldn't even draw her mom without the t-shirt on?? Because the story is so good that it doesn't need an eye refresher, right?" Lets see, what else?
Character. Yeah, right. :))) You know Bella, Twilight? Thats better than this. I know! It is saying a lot about this... this... Oh, nevermind.
Overall, if you watched everything else and you have nothing better to do, still DON'T watch this! Better re-watch some fav anime. Cya.

This review will contain spoilers but I'll try to keep them brief and as minor as possible.

If I really wanted, I could summarize this anime in one sentence. Take all of the romance tropes from the last decade, add some polished art and there's Kami-sama. Now you'd think I'm joking when I say that I expected this to be a Charlotte or an Angel Beats coming from the same author right? No, of course not. This anime is as mediocre as they come. All of the character interactions I found myself cringing at because of how poorly they are done. You have a high schooler ... getting ready to go to university, and he still can't control his voice. If you were looking for a true relaxed SoL (which I doubt anyone here is because it is expected that the anime would turn out like the author's previous works) then perhaps I could see the first 5-6 episodes passing. However, even an SoL has some sort of plot to move it forward, some sort of comedy to keep the viewer entertained. Kami-sama had none of that for me. Every week I just waited for the "main event". When the "main event" finally came, it was soooo lackluster it again made me cringe. I predicted it a mile away, and although I think it could have been pulled off and I would have enjoyed it still, the worst moment of the anime came. I can't go into too much detail without spoiling the whole anime (not that there's much to be spoiled for) but the character interactions become a 0/10, the plot takes a dive (yet again), and at this point I'm wondering if it can even get any worse. When the insert song came in at the very end I honestly started laughing about how bad this show was. This anime combines everything I hate into one show. Shallow characters, a horrendous plot, very bad comedy, boring slice of life moments, and a poor soundtrack (I did like the opening though to be fair). Most anime that I find have one or two of these elements missing, with few having more. Regardless, no anime I've seen thus far has come this close to making me want to drop it. It's not just boring, it's offensive. Don't watch this anime if you want another Angel Beats or Charlotte, you won't get that.

Kamisami ni Natta Hi currently holds the worst rating on my anime list. Never before have I been compelled to give an anime just 1 out of 10, but this took the cake. It is so bad, so chock full of cliche bullshit, so exploitative and just such a poor effort. By the time the last episode rolled around, I was practically laughing my ass off. The 'emotional' moments were so bad they were funny. This also has one of the worst (and most creepy) romances of all time.

Because I hate this anime so much, I will be totally lenient with spoilers. So if you ... care about the plot of this dreadful show, you can go ahead and skip over my review, but I promise you that you aren't missing anything.

I've said this before, but if they stuck with the formulaic structure of the first 5 episodes or so, where Hina and Youta go around solving people's problems, it would be a much better show. But no, where would the emotion be! How would Jun Maeda make you cry for the cute moe anime girl?

This time, Jun Maeda ran out of ideas. After all, there were only so many car accidents and plane crashes that he could come up with. Suddenly, he had an idea! "Wait a minute... That's it! People die from illnesses too!" was surely the revelation he had before sitting down to pen the screenplay for this show. "And they don't even die immediately! I can draw out the sadness for multiple episodes. And, and and they can record video messages to the future, they could do more than write a note before they die in an accident! Oh my god Jun you've done it again. This is going to be your finest work yet. The saddest anime... ever!"

And so he set to work, but he needed time, time to perfect the anime. Unfortunately, production had already started! Oh no! How was he going to deal with this? He gazed out of his window. Down on the street there was a young person collecting money for charity. Hmmm.... what do charities do? They help people! Perfect. He decided he would send the character outlines to the studio and quickly write a few stories about helping people. And so there was the first half of the show sorted. He would realise all too late, however, that he forgot to write in any character development! 'No problem'. He would just rush the character development into a handful of scenes. After all, anime watchers are all pretty much braindead anyway, he thought to himself.

At least, I imagine that's what was going through his head, because all the character development in this show happens in 2 minutes or less in completely ridiculous circumstances, and for rather unclear reasons too! It's like they just cut like half of the show! For example, Yota's best friend (that like, never says anything) suddenly becomes in sync with him for one episode and they have a flashback because they are... jumping from a motorcycle onto a truck? Why are they jumping onto a truck? Well its because the most idiotic writing ever means that Hina has walked into the back of a truck and sat down inside and the doors were locked and the truck drove away. It's so stupid it makes your head hurt. Anyway, you'd think developing this friendship might have a purpose. Like what might be done in a tightly written script. Nope! Their relationship never comes up again??? OK fine, surely that's a one off. Nope. They randomly develop the hacker antagonist of the show like he is going to be part of a big mystery, we get glimpses of him every other episode. Finally he shows up for most of an episode, he shoots laser beams at a whale while monologuing how his parents were evil etc etc cliche sob story etc. So then contrary to this character that was established, he sells out Hina for 0 reward, then rages that they took her supercomputer chip that keeps her brain alive. He hangs out with Yota and pals for MONTHS, then gets mad that Yota didn't chase after Hina. That's all he does in the show. He literally did not have to be in there.

In general, all the character development only lasts for a few minutes in a single episode eg. Tengan Koko was introduced, characterised and promptly forgotten about and now she hangs out with a bunch of teenagers all day. Some of the side characters aren't even characters as much as convenient bodies. In episode 8 the camera pans out and Yota is like 'omg i didnt realise I had so many friends'. 2 of those 'friends' are just a loan shark and Tengan's bodyguard. Then his sister likes films and speaks in a slightly different way. Yota's male friend never says anything (why I don't even know his name). Then there is the ramen shop owner who hasn't spoken since the second episode. Real tight group of friends, a very lovable cast indeed! Why did they even need a cast of characters? I'll tell you why. For a sequence at the end where they make a movie, a movie they only made so Jun Maeda can get Hina to record a video message.

I haven't even started on the worst part of this show. And that's Hina. At first, Hina seems like a likeable enough character. All her characterisation is that she can predict the future to some degree, she speaks in an old timey pompous way and she wears a goofy outfit. Also she likes video games because she is an epic moe girl please make her your waifu and stop paying attention to the quality of the show. But omg, Hina must be hiding something. What's her secret!?! Where did she come from? Is she a god? Well, actually, she is a girl with anime disease. This disease means that she has trouble moving and communicating, and acts much younger than she is. But she was cured by her grandpa who built her a quantum computer that lets her function above and beyond typical human ability. How does that work? Sorry, no time for questions! So when shadowy government organisations that are never mentioned again take her quantum computer, she instantly becomes an object you are meant to cry and feel sad for. It's so manipulative and disgusting. Even more bizarre than this, she is meant to have developed feelings for Yota by the end of the anime. She is like 12 years old! Yota is about to go to college! WTF!?! I remember watching Episode 10 where this 'confession' happens, and literally everyone on the forums was confused and were hoping that this was just familial love between her and Yota. It's not! Their entirely undeveloped, creepy and bizarre romance is dropped on you with all the grace of a falling piano. Yota chases after her to the care home or whatever she is taken to, and basically he just messes up over and over again making her scream and cry. This wasn't sad, or funny. This just made me feel sick. You get the idea. By the end of the anime they are soulmates apparently and Yota is going to dedicate his life to her, she can't even really communicate with him so she's along for the ride regardless. So how will Yota know how she feels? It's okay, she recorded a video message! She says she had a nice summer. That's basically it, Yota is happy. The anime ends. And they all live happily ever after, please forget about the government conspiracy.

This show is so, painfully bad. I cannot recommend anyone watches this, ever. What's about to happen in each scene is so predictable, you would know whats coming if you were watching the show without subtitles through someone's window in a bush a mile away. There isn't anything worth seeing in here. Stay well, well away from this show, and if you didn't, well then slap it with a 1/10 rating so we can stop others time being wasted with this too. When I first wrote my preliminary review for this show, it had a score of 7.43, I am pleased to see it's now at a 6.something but we can do better. Flush this show down the toilet, give it a lower score than ex arm. Bury it deep underground so that noone will ever find or remember it.

Kamisama ni Natta Hi is the pinnacle of anime. Coming from the renowned Jun Maeda, the man behind such great shows as Charlotte, Clannad and Angel Beats, Kamisama would undoubtedly go on to become a classic within the anime community. The anime features a complex and unique plot, with characters written so well that you would mistake them to be real people. ...Yeah as if.

To put it bluntly, Kamisama is a disappointment. It is the single worst anime that I have ever watched, and certainly not something I would have expected from Jun Maeda. When I first started the show, I didn't have much expectations ... but holy shit it managed to disappoint even those. The show is a shitfest. It falls apart faster than a sandcastle being washed up by a sudden wave. Without any further ado, let's get into each individual component because, boy oh boy, is there a lot to get into. Oh, and in case anyone cares, I will be getting into some spoilers.

STORY 1/10
I won't be summarizing the story since you can just read the synopsis and it would have a better story anyways. The plot of the show is nonsensical. It's clearly lazy writing. The story is littered with cliches, which wouldn't have been an issue if it wasn't executed like someone trying to kill an ant using a magnifying glass on a rainy day. It started out fine enough, with a pretty minimalistic slice of life storyline which, while flawed, was certainly no deal breaker. But then, everything goes to shit when they try to introduce the actual main story. The whole story revolves around Hina having a fucking supercomputer in her head which runs at temperatures lower than my freezer. Seriously, this thing has 10x the computing power of NASA's computers and still runs at a lower temp than my shitty laptop. While that's nonsensical, it gets worse. Since the computer is so powerful that it can literally predict the future, the government and all the corporations team up and hire some orphan from the slums to "hack into the mainframe" and find her location. In the end, they find her, and fucking kidnap her so they can cut her head open to take the chip, so she ends up returning to a state which is less than ideal to say the least. I've already said this before, but the story is so cliched that it has no semblance of originality to it. So yeah, a solid 1/10 for that.

Art 8/10
Surprisingly, this anime isn't completely bad for 2 reasons. It's art and music/sound. I'll get into the sound later but the art is what you'd expect from a Jun Maeda show. The characters all have the same sort of art style as Charlotte. The main character, Narukami looks like a ripoff Charlotte protagonist but the rest of the characters aren't too bad. The animation is nice throughout with no noticeable dips in quality, and the backgrounds are good as well. There really isn't much else to say about this so I'll move on.

Sound 8/10
This might be personal opinion, but I really liked the OST and insert songs they used. The piano which they may or may not overuse is something I'm a huge fan of and I think it's pretty fitting and sounds good. Nagi Yanagi did a good job on the music with very nice vocals. I don't have much to say about the sound effects either, they didn't stand out much and did its job fairly well so we'll just end it here.

Characters 1/10
Holy moly, the characters are badly written. Let's start off with our protagonists, Narukami and Hina. Narukami is completely one dimensional, with less character development than side characters from a fifth grader's homework that they were supposed to submit 5 days ago. Sorry, that's probably a bit insulting to the fifth grader but you get the point. The MC is lazily written, a cardboard cutout who exists only to reply to whatever Hina says in a nonchalant manner. Almost all the decisions he makes alone are so stupid that you would think he has the decision making skills of a 10 year old who's just been left alone at home for the first time in his life. But that's enough about him, so let's talk more about our other protagonist, Hina. Hina was probably the closest thing we got to a real character in the entire show. Some of her dialogue were actually funny, and she felt like a unique character. Sure, it wasn't the most realistic thing ever, but it was different. Then they took the one character we had, and gutted her until there was nothing left. By the time the show reaches its climax, all that's left of Hina is a husk. Unable to talk, and only capable of throwing tantrums when they get close. When the show reaches the emotional scenes, I felt nothing except disappointment at how badly they massacred my boy. Next let's talk about the side characters. I'll just keep it brief with a few words. Irrelevant, cardboard cutout, stereotypes. And of course, the hacker kid was there too. Honestly, he was just a plot device.

Enjoyment 2/10
Did I enjoy this anime? No.

Overall 1/10
It started off with promise, but as time passed on, I only saw it getting worse and worse and worse and worse and worse. It just ended with me feeling disappointed by yet another shitty ending Jun Maeda anime to the list. Not gonna lie though, watching the ratings fall lower on MAL was pretty fun the first few times. Still enjoyed the OST though. Would I recommend it to anyone? No, save yourself the few hours and just go watch something else.

The name Jun Maeda might ring a bell to fans of anime adaptations of visual novels from Key that were popular in the 2000s and early 2010s like Kanon, Air, and Clannad with his involvement in their writing. These titles were well known for having light comedy mixed in with heavy drama, romance, and fantasy elements that pushed things rather heavily with suspension of disbelief. Unfortunately, pushing out the same type of storytelling formula with all your works can lead to audiences tiring of someone’s creative works over time. Such is the case with Maeda’s most recent anime made, The Day I Became a God, ... focused on high school student Yota Narukami meeting a strange girl in nun attire named Hina who claims that the world will end in 30 days and promises to help Yota with his affairs in the time they have left.

Roughly the first eight episodes of The Day I Became a God focus on Hina aiding Yota and several of his friends in helping them out with their various problems. She shows a superhuman level of predictive abilities that help aid the characters with resolving whatever personal issues they are facing. This storytelling focus has its equal parts of the light comedy and emotional drama you can typically expect out of Maeda’s works. However, the biggest issue with this angle to the series is that much of this focus on Yota’s classmates feels irrelevant in the grand scheme of things as their developments feel a bit rushed, they largely remain the same characters once their dilemmas get resolved, and they get pushed back into the background once their story is over. All this feels largely done to show off how impressive Hina’s abilities are, pad out the TV anime’s runtime, and reminds me of the issues that the anime adaptation of Air had back in 2005 with its focus on Kano and Minagi’s story arcs.

The side story of the series involving a mysterious organization investigating someone related to Hina serves as the actual focus to the series, though even this is ripe with a number of issues. This angle to the series implements the fantasy elements of Became a God, but more into the sci-fi realm as said organization relies on the hacking abilities of a young man with superhuman calculative abilities to aid them in their goals, serves to eventually reveal the source of Hina’s superhuman predictive abilities, and lead into the more serious developments of its final four episodes. This unfortunately creates a rather misleading direction for the show’s story as a whole with the direction its drama goes and does a rather sloppy and unconvincing job of developing a romance direction that early episodes never hinted to or smoothly developed. It also dabbles into some complicated themes like government corruption and the ethics of technological advances and uses, yet Maeda never bothers to dabble further into these themes as he’s more fixated on the unconvincing romance he sloppily put together at this point of the series.

But perhaps the one element to the series that made me personally disgusted with the final few episodes of Became a God was its handling of medical treatment for the disabled. Limiting spoilers, one major character gets heavily disabled enough to the point where they get admitted to a medical facility for treatment of their disorder and require regular support from nursing staff to maintain their everyday functions. My issue isn’t so much with the nursing staff in question as the series believably depicts the delicate handling of treatment for the character in question, the nursing staff genuinely caring for the character’s well-being, and how anything outside the scope of regular care they are receiving can be a negative risk to their physical and mental condition. My issue with this angle to the series is that because of Maeda’s storytelling approach, he tries to manipulate the audience into thinking the “power of love” can overcome whatever issues this character is experiencing while ignorant of the various accommodations, amount of therapy time, and necessary needs that would have to be in place for the living environment of said character to be able to live comfortably outside of a medical facility. Having experienced developmental and physical disabilities personally growing up, I’m aware of the struggles both personally and within society that occur when going through the effort to go through therapy in improving both my physical condition and my ability to properly interact with others. The fact Maeda thinks he can just gloss over this harsh angle to reality to create his idealized romance personally ticked me off and made my viewing of Became a God’s final few episodes a struggle to get through.

In short, The Day I Became a God greatly exposes the issues with the storytelling approach from Jun Maeda with having a good deal of storytelling issues, pushing suspension of disbelief too heavily, a good chunk of its story from its first half largely feeling pointless and feeling like filler, misleading audiences with its haphazard change in story direction, the sloppy romance it tries pushing for, and glossing over some serious themes to focus more on said sloppy romance. While I would typically rate this as a weak series and just move on from there, Maeda’s handling of treatment for the disabled in pushing for his romance angle personally ticked me off enough as such where I’m actually rather disgusted with this series and this now ranks among my all-time worst anime as a result.

What would you do if you could become the god of the world? The god named Odin, asks Yuta the protaginist, while also stating the world ends in 30 days. Most would reasonably ignore the little loli spouting off they are a god, but this unreasonable loli is more than what meets the eye.

Kamisama Ni Natta Hi blends the genres of comedy, slice of life, romance, and terrible writing into a confusing amalgamation. The writer Jun Maeda helped to write for many popular series, for example he wrote Angel Beats, Charlotte, and Little Busters. As a Jun Maeda anime many anticipated an ending with water ... works. Yet many didn’t expect what would become of Kamisama Ni Natta Hi, with its bad execution of developing said story.

The series twists and turns around a bizarre cast characters. Odin comes off as a cheap plot device until much later in the series, where it was far to late. The story the cast stumbles around isn’t much better as it careens head first into unreasonable situations. These are wrote off as Odin being a god, so structure is forgotten. Let’s write and direct a movie, let’s become champions in Majong, let’s help a struggling ramen shop, let’s make a story that’s completely trivial! Forget any well thought-out plot structure, where the best effort is a predictable ending that’s hard to comprehend. It’s difficult to comes to terms with because it all feels pointless!

Yuta is a blank slate protaginist with the same core principles you’ve seen a million times. In principle there is nothing wrong with starting off simple. It allows the audience from episode one to plug themselves into the situation at hand. Maybe even make them feel attached enough to feel empathy. But this series has no hindsight, which makes Yuta feel like a flat soda. Instead of having a dynamic personality for a series with a god as a main character, they delivered a template character. I despise when writers choose this path for their protagonists when they’re written like this. If the protaginist is a forgettable blank slate, why should I care about him? Why should the audience care for his interactions with other characters? It’s a shame for the supposed emotional ending could have been much more, where a unique protaginist would have made me empathize for the situation more.

The most important character, Odin, better known as Hina, has a memorable aesthetic, a backstory, and bubbly characteristics. Odin is someone where I could recognize them easily because of how they developed her into a 3 dimensional human.

The others ranged from a shy childhood friend template, to a tsundere milf template. To be fair, characters in any one cour anime struggle to develop anyone in such little time. It’s tough to create a situation where fictional characters have to be humanized in twelve episodes. Even the best one cour anime have nothing on longer series in character development.

These one dimensional characters hurt any shot of taking the romance seriously. One might as well throw away Izanami x Youta in the garbage as it doesn’t work! How can I or the audience relate to having a childhood friend crush, to simply scrapping that relationship, to fall for a “magical” loli. Where Kamisama Ni Natta Hi slips up the worst is the story, in which the cast has no chance of being special.

I was hoping Kamisama Ni Natta Ni would become a series that could make me feel emotionally attached, like Jun Maeda’s earlier works. Maeda stated in a interview that this would his saddest work. Maybe if the series was properly structured or if the characters made me feel even slight empathy. If it took even a slight direction change, for example into a more serious start with the narrative as a large importance, Kamisama Ni Natta Hi could have hit different. The saving grace are the visuals. They turn an otherwise directionless mess, into a beautiful mess. The comedy fits well with the art style they are attempting to portray.

Kamisama Ni Natta Hi left me feeling conflicted. The great production from P.A. Works is wasted on this, where the art style is the greatest strength. The story never knew what it wanted to become. Bad characters that weren’t executed correctly. And an ending that felt rushed, leaving wasted potential from all parties.

I would not recommend Kamisama Ni Natta Hi to anyone, unless one enjoys offbeat comedy, or a hack-job Angel Beats.

Spoilers until Episode 10.

When I first started this show, I had zero expectations. There is no source material, so nobody really knows what this show is about. I was willing to go with anything this show will be, romance, sci-fi, fantasy, anything. And now up to episode 10... I still don't know what this show is really about.

Story: 2/10

First of all, there is no "plot" in the first 8 episodes. They're just a series of events just happening for the purpose of "calm before the storm". And it doesn't work. There is no progression, no rising tension. The only progression we got is the countdown ... to the end of the world. Even so, everyone in the show was uninterested in this. So there is no real tension. And the writers threw the "end of the world" thing away in episode 9, and it turned into a completely different show. I don't have problems with a show changing its direction, but in this show I just felt cheated. The only thing that is keeping me from dropping this show has been thrown into the bin.

It felt like every episode was written by different people. Everything that happens from episode 1 to 8 served NO PURPOSE whatsoever in the story as a whole. They are all forgettable events. The Mahjong episode, ramen shop, Youta dressing up as real life movie characters, they are all useless in the story. I understand the writers intention with this. They want us to experience their everyday lives, get emotionally attached to them, and then tragedy strikes and we should be feeling sad. That's basically the whole show in a nutshell.

The best episode is Kyouko's family story. I genuinely felt something in the episode. Its a shame that the story had nothing to do with the overall plot.

The actual plot only starts in episode 9. However, its already too late. There was no build up to the scene where Youta and Hina gets separated. And it is due to their character.

Character: 2/10

Youta and Hina are not good characters. Youta has almost no character to him. He feels like a side character in this show. There were moments where Youta and Hina looked like they like each other, but that is all for nothing in episode 9, where she willingly gets taken away from Youta, like its no big deal. There is no struggle, no emotional conflict from her, nothing. I do not feel any emotional bond between Youta and Hina, so the separation scene felt empty.

Besides, almost every character in this show doesn't need to exist for the plot. They are suitable in a different show, not in this one. They are not involved in the story at all. Thinking back from episode 1 to 8, everything that happened with them felt meaningless and a waste of time.

Let's talk about Suzuki Hiroto. I think this show will be much better if he is the main character. We got to see his backstory in episode 9, and that made him way more likable than Youta. Although the underwater scene was cringy as hell, he is the only character with the sense of urgency. That is what's missing in this show. The sense of urgency. The world is gonna end, and nobody cared, so why should I?

When Hiroto desperately tries to warn Hina of a coming danger, I felt him. Because I guess he is also an enhanced human. I feel more for Hiroto than Youta.

Art: 8/10

One of the very few good things about this show is the animation. I had no complaints about the art and animation.

Music: 8/10

I did not pay attention to the soundtracks. But the OP and ED songs are good.

Overall: 3

This show feels like an essay exam that is written in just 30 minutes without a double check or a second draft. The emotional scenes felt empty, Youta and Hina emotional bonds are non existent, there is no sence of urgency, no tension. The episodes don't have the feeling of continuation. The only things I can praise is the animation, the songs and the voice acting.

It's simply a well made anime with a bad script. And that is a shame.