Deaimon

*This review contains heavy spoilers of episode 3 and 10*
Kamichu! is an anime aired in 2005 that tells the story of Yurie, a middle schooler who becomes a kami overnight. The structure of the story develops into multiple episodic adventures where Yurie must approach her new responsibilities and solve human problematics and wishes, all that while being an actual middle schooler with middle school worries and ambitions. Kamichu is a truly sweet experience with a memorable soundtrack and a vibrant soul that manifests through each one of its frames, with characters that you cheer for, an exquisite sense of nostalgia, and a surprising innocent fully-fledged ... romance, accompanied by an award-winning direction. Why would I mention Kamichu here? Because Deaimon fails at basically everything that Kamichu does correctly, and its own basic structure is basically the same as Kamichu. If you somehow liked this anime, then watch Kamichu. If you are about to watch this anime, then just watch Kamichu. It is just day and night, and it shows at every single corner.

Deaimon intent is to create a relevant relationship between traditional Japanese sweets and the conflicts that each character present in an episodic manner. Every episode presents a sweet related to a meaning and a problematic, and it tries to tie both cohesively. By incorporating Nagomu, a middle-aged man who just left his band to work in his parent’s shop, the anime intends to create healing moments by applying his selfless and empathetic nature to the cast, which would be equivalent to an emotional savior. Nagomu face his own issues too, he suffered a breakup and the apparent rejection of his family. However, Nagomu still can reach the others to provide help, the series install the idea of helping to grow, a bidirectional relationship of care.

Here is the first downfall of this anime, and this is an honest question for anyone who watched this anime, who the fuck cared about the sweets? Were the sweets anything but mere decoration and white noise for a vapid metaphor? Every single dialogue about the sweets is an awkward infodump with a bunch of nonsense words that tries to expose the meaning or origin of the sweet. This is supposed to be a promotion to Japanese sweets, but the anime would be the same without the sweets, hell, it would be fucking better. You have anime like Super Cub, Yuru Camp or the ceramic anime that actively do an effort to incorporate their product into the plot, this anime just doesn’t, it just throws a bunch of dialogue, showcase the sweets like a low-quality ad, and then continue with the story like nothing happened.

If you ignore the shoehorned sweet aspect, then the anime is just an insipid collection of typical dramas. The only salvageable aspects would be Itsuka and Kanoko stories, as they both have some sort of engaging development (Mostly because they last more than half an episode). Itsuka juxtaposition of being a middle schooler and being obsessed with the idea of rejection and responsibility creates sweet sporadic spotlights, while Kanoko regrets create an interesting storyline to watch for of self-searching. The problem of the series is not that there are not some good healing dramatic moments amongst the 12 episodes, the problem is that it is full of shitty scummy garbage awfully inserted stories that have no substance at all.

There is a character that arrives as a new intern for Ryokushou for half an episode to portray the theme of striving for perfection, which plays an interesting contrast to Nagomu lack of professional abilities. This character appears, creates a drama that completely breaks her implied character, proposes absolutely nothing to the main plot, and then vanishes from the series to just be a grandpacon comedy device after having a lazy resolution. That happens almost every single episode that is not based on Kanoko or Itsuka, I’m not even lying.

Even if one goes for the two interesting storylines, be Itsuka growth or Kanoko self-healing, the writing is just so absurdly stupid and lazy that I cannot but think that they are playing a joke on the viewers. I will just exemplify it with episode three, one should not require more than two braincells to see the absurdity:
- The episode starts with a flashback of Itsuka about a festival (Or whatever, I forgor), then it abruptly cuts to a random girl saying Kyoto (Pure foreshadowing guys! Do not leave your chair! Who this girl going to be?)
- Nagomu wants to go to a festival with Itsuka, Itsuka obviously says no. Nagomu starts to remember a promise to his ex-girlfriend (I love the subtlety on this one, I obviously cannot see what is going to happen, who said Kyoto!?)
- Itsuka leaves the store and go to school
- Itsuka takes the wrong bus because she sees someone with a guitar (This is the dumbest shit that this anime tries to pull off btw, I just buy it because I have never been abandoned by a guitar player so maybe it is believable). The scene abruptly cuts to show the concern of Nagomu to ignite the search. Abruptly is an understatement btw
- Itsuka fell asleep and didn’t even see the guitar player. Yes, the girl who is tailing her supposed father fell asleep just to put a flashback. A flashback that can be put anywhere else in the episode
- Itsuka tries to look for the guitar player in a temple by asking the people that were on the bus (??? Peak rationality here)
- The girl (Kanoko) is COINCIDENTALLY in that place and COINCIDENTALLY starts to talk with her, presenting herself to the audience (Emphasis on audience) with an alien dialogue straight out of a chatbot
- Kanoko mentions the festival that Itsuka rejected and tells her motivations to the audience (Emphasis on audience again, the dialogues are just infodumps that just connect her character to the plot), then Itsuka connects the sweet with the plot (Coca Cola open happiness type of beat), comedy homicide dialogue afterwards
- Nagomu founds Itsuka and Kanoko in the mountain JUST when they are about to part ways (??????????? You cannot make that shit up, at least make Kanoko stay with Itsuka)
- I will not write anything else, just think: What is the anime trying to do as the conclusion of this assassination? Isn’t it obvious after the anime mentions out of nowhere a random ass festival as something important? (Spoiler: The anime tries to sell this as the goal of the episode, not as something bound to happen)

Look, I don’t mind coincidences in anime, they are sometimes necessary to keep some sort of progression, but this is absolute shamelessness, like how can anyone eat this up? This is the one of the most lazy and desperate introductions that I have seen in a while. Do you know the worst thing about it? These coincidences are just fucking everywhere. Another example:
- There is an episode where a girl is having a problem with her name
- Her name was related to her grandma (Somehow she didn’t know, not going to question that)
- Her grandma did not want to reveal it as a solution (Spoiler: That solves the conflict, she reveals it afterwards, this is just to kill time).
- Then the grandchild of the grandma’s ex-lover (???) decides to go to the shop (!!!???) just when the girl is coincidentally in the shop (!!!!!!!??????) to ask for someone with the same name as the girl (Spoiler: It is the grandma, it was obvious since ten minutes ago, what is this suspense? Of course, the grandma enters the store when she is still eating). Four ridiculous coincidences, like what the fuck?

If you do not notice, this makes Kanoko’s introduction even worse. Why would you not introduce her through the shop? A random character conveniently went to the shop in the exact precise moment during that episode, why would you be afraid of doing the same with Kanoko? Why couldn’t they spawn her character there? And talk to Itsuka there? And make her surprised by Nagomu appearance after an exchange with his parents in a place where Nagomu would naturally be? It even writes itself! Introduce Kanoko and let her talk with Itsuka (The motivation of Kanoko could be changed, she could pretty much not know the store), Itsuka mentions the festival naturally thinking about her father, Kanoko starts to talk shit about Nagomu with his mother unknowingly, the parents start to agree with Kanoko, Nagomu appears, Kanoko is embarrassed, the mother starts to laugh and say “Of course! That is the Nagomu that I know! Hahah!!”, then you continue the episode by doing the conversation between Kanoko and Nagomu inside the shop, maybe shift the festival point to here so it doesn’t spoil the whole episode. How is that worse than using such absurd set of events to introduce her character? Why is this series incapable of not being stupid?

And it gets worse than that, the anime is not just satisfied by being a bland, it is not satisfied by not incorporating the intended motif correctly, it is not even satisfied by using the most absurd and robotic ways to solve or incorporate conflicts, it fucking sucks at setting the mood too. The anime for some reason has one of the worst storyboarding that I have seen, there is absolutely no space to any scene, they are continuously interrupted by a random barely correlated superfluous shots and they even have continuity errors. It is just obnoxious to watch because most of the conversations are pure background noise, they have no weight at all and introduce nothing important to either the characters or the story, it is just a downstream of mundane dialogues and comedy homicides.

The conclusion is obvious, this anime stinks. The only redeemable attribute is that it is just an inch above being frustrating because it is at least chill, but it is just a bunch of nothing with run-of-the-mill drama. Going back to Kamichu. Kamichu incorporates perfectly the traditional religious stuff. Each Kamichu conflict have a huge sense of importance and emotionality, coherently developing the cast. Kamichu doesn’t rely on random coincidences to create the situations (I’m capping here, but they are less shameless). Kamichu scenes are chef kiss, they are created with creative composition and magnificent sense of humanity, it makes you want to go the places that they are showcasing and live their lives. And it just has a shitton of magic. There is a cat that talks in Kamichu, and such eventuality is more credible than Deaimon as a whole. Indeed, that cat is more human than any character of Deaimon.