Our main character, Kyouhei Kuga (Generic first name is generic), is pretty much a normal guy. At least, normal as a main character can be. He’s clueless, bland in his personality, considered a wimp, all the things that seem to make up a good main harem love interest… I mean main character. Sorry, but he just doesn’t stand out except when he is looking back at his tragic past. Sadly, because of this tragic past, he acts like a tragic hero. The only thing that seems important to him is his little sister Utao. He is always trying to train her so that whatever happened in the past wasn’t going to happen in the future. Now whatever that one thing in the past was is a spoiler because they never come right out and say it for a long time. I do wonder, how is it that in a guy from a village where there can be names like Utao and Hibino, names that are actually not normal at all, how the heck did he get one of the most generic names out there?
Utao is his rather cute little sister, and for some reason she is seen as the one that has the most to lose more then any of the other kakashi controllers. She is clumsy, ditsy, and a little bit selfish but is pretty much the normal young girl that is in every show. The only odd thing is that she is the character that I would have considered to be the main character as her dealing with controlling the massive Kukuri would have been more interesting. Sure the whole back story about what happen with Kyouhei is alright, but it’s been done before. The wars between a small town and its religion, also been done. Little girl with a surprisingly strong power, been done but I have never really seen it with something that is so close to being a god like this. The only thing that I don’t like is how the ending segment is basically puppet her and Kukuri puppet being goofs.
His love interest, Hibino Shiba, seems like an average girl herself being a very old childhood friend from the small village that Kyouhei is from. She is surprisingly calm about everything that is happening… except when someone asks if she is dating Kyouhei, then she freaks out. Geeeeee… wonder why? Anyway, I consider her more along the lines as a filter for us viewers since she knows nothing of her village or the temple (which seems really surprising since she is from the same village). Kyouhei and Utao feed her the information and then spoon feed it to us. It is my belief that is all that she is for since she seems to force herself to be in a lot of different situations where she really doesn’t have to be. Oh, and FWI, get used to everyone calling her the stupid woman with the big tits. Everyone calls her that throughout the whole show and they don’t even try to hide them.
Aki is basically our main villain of the show… at least I first thought he was. This is partly where the story gets to sound like every other story before it. The main character is betrayed by his friend and so moves away, his friend seeking revenge goes after him. It doesn’t really matter that Kyouhei isn’t the one controlling Kukuri; Aki just goes after him and kills anyone in his path. And then there are some odd things that happen that make me wonder exactly what he is. Again, he is another character that I would have been really happy to have as a main character then the one we did get. I think his back story would be more interesting and have enough action to be fun.
The village that these characters came from has a large secret and no, it’s not a spoiler. They come right out and say it mostly in the first episode. They have Gods that they can control although I believe them more to be living dolls with strong spiritual powers. I guess that is a really awesome idea if the episodes didn’t always seem to end up with a slice of life bit thrown in. I can understand that they were trying to show how different the characters were to one another, the way they grew up and so on.
The animation is actually very interesting, I wouldn’t say the same as most of the stuff out there in this time frame, but on the other side it does have its own takes. I don’t know if it’s just me ending up watching all the childish bubbly sort of anime that makes this one feel different, but it does. The designs of the Kakashi (The dolls with god powers) are actually rather unique and I really fell in love with the cute Kukuri the first moment I saw him/her/it. This was made by the same people who created ‘Durarara!!’ And ‘Baccano!’ so the art style has picked up a lot of that design. Since I liked that design from them, I also did like this one. Unfortunately, with that also comes the less awesome parts. Some action scenes actually seem to lose all manner of design every once in a while, characters lose some movement, and so on. This does not happen very often and most of it is really good, but once in a while you do get a hiccup in animation. The ending segment was a little out there, and I did not like it one bit. It was a small segment after the ending credits that are called ‘Kamisama Dolls Corner’. I don’t know what that was all about but it was seriously disturbing. Basically we got live action hand puppets of Utao and Kukuri moving about. You could actually tell where the hand was underneath Utao or the stuck under Kukuri because of how bad the green screen affect was. It was basically a slap in the face to the whole show. It broke the tension that the show had and I almost didn’t finish it because of how badly it took me out of the show.
The music doesn’t really stand out that much. Though I did like the opening song, it would be hard for me to pick it came out of no where like other animes such as Fullmetal Alchemist or Hellsing. It was cute and sweet but again, nothing that stood out. I also liked whatever cute and soft song Kukuri was singing whenever she started moving about. It was very sweet and almost had a calming affect against the harshness of some of the scenes. The voice acting was actually rather good, and I was surprised to find that one of the male characters was played by Luci Christian. She actually sounded like a guy that was the right age instead of a girly guy. I can’t tell you who it is that she voices as that is a spoiler but just trust me that it works. Aki’s voice actor, David Matranga, did a really good job having this really crazy point and then making sure it calmed down enough to sound methodical. The rest of the voice actors are really good but didn’t stand out. When everyone has a pretty good voice, then nothing really stands out over the whole.
Overall, the show is actually really interesting and I like the twists and turns of the show. The sad part is that I feel this had an ending that yelled out ‘read the manga’ with so many questions left unanswered. The series was either to short or it decided to goof around to much to give us enough information. I still have questions left unanswered and still am confused as to many things about the village and the Kakashi but since there is no second season and the manga seems to be hard to track down, I don’t know if I will have a actual answer. One last thing, the ending credits are really stupid when they show scenes that were not in the show and yet it’s the last episode.
