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
