Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens (かんなぎ) is a 13 episode super natural romance series based on the manga of the same name by Takenashi Eri. The series originally aired in the Fall of 2008.
The story follows Mikuriya Jin, a self sufficient high school student. Jin joined the schools art club to find purpose in his life. In doing, so a fellow classmate, Daitetsu, gives him a portion of the local shrines sacred tree to use for an art festival. Daitetsu knew that Jin always liked going to the shrine as a child and took this opportunity to give him something nice from the soon to be demolished holy site. Jin lives alone in his family home. His father works away from home and leaves his lone son’s safety to his childhood friend Tsugumi. One day as he struggles to bring the carving he made to school it ends up breaking and a young girl who resembles the carving is in its place. The girl, calling herself Nagi, claims to be the resident god of the shrine and chooses to live with Jin, who has summoned her through the carving. Jin is dumbfounded but tentatively agrees to help the mysterious girl out. Once Nagi finds out that Jin is sensitive to the supernatural she enlists his help in banishing the impurities of the land. Jin tentatively agrees but once her existence can no longer be kept secret he scrambles to fabricate a lie about her identity. The first person to find her at his house, is Tsugumi, who is instantly suspicious and jealous due to her feelings for her childhood friend. Jin and Nagi convince her that they are long lost siblings and that she has been kicked out of her far off, posh house to live with her half brother. Soon fighting impurities brings Nagi to Jin and Tsugumi’s school where she pretends to be a new student. With this opportunity she begins to build her power by getting people to worship her, in order to better fight the impurities. When Nagi’s sister, Zenge shows up, it becomes a sibling rivalry to amass the most followers. Jin now has to maintain his story about Nagi’s identity, help her fight impurities and fend off the unwanted advances from Zenge while trying to keep his relationship with Tsugumi intact. In the end the stress pushes him to his limits and he demands to understand the true nature of Nagi, her sister and their purpose.
With this description you could formulate a couple of ideas about how this series rolls. At once you have the pathetic and over played mysterious magic girl coming from some odd beginnings to live with the hapless high school kid scenario. Then you have the magical being fighting the good fight with the help of the normal high school student. You also have the love triangle harem thing going on between all three main female characters. None of these definitions really tap into what this show is all about. Sure you have the non-human girl who comes from mysterious origins to live with the socially inept high school student who just so happens to live alone. Said supernatural girl does enlist the inept student into helping her with her supernatural duties. Yes there is some level of competition between the 3 main female characters for Jin’s attention. The series doesn’t linger on these ideas or even make them the main focus of the show.
The best way to describe this series would be to call it a slice of life high school comedy fish out of water tale. Nagi, whose consciousness has been asleep for a while, at least a few decades, is unaccustomed to modern conveniences. She is quickly drawn to TV and convenience store food. The first thing she sees on TV is a magical girl anime, which instantly grabs her attention and she tries to use it as her identity for fighting impurities, right down to fashioning a magical wand and posing while purifying. The funniest example of her lack of modern knowledge is in the first time she answers a phone. Jin tells her not to answer the phone while he takes a bath. During his bath the phone rings and he runs out, naked, for fear of the consequences of a mysterious girl answering it. He finds her in the hallway staring at the receiver in her hand as his childhood friend is saying hello. He quickly grabs it and apologizes for the wait. To underscore her lack of understanding she questions what a the word phone even means.
While Nagi’s mission is to fight the bug shaped impurities, she relies on Jin to pick them up so she can banish them, the act of hunting them and banishing them is a very minor part of the series. In about half of the episodes there are no impurities at all. They don’t even turn the purifying of them into a big ordeal, it’s just something they do, like hey look there’s one get it and I’ll whack it with my magical wand. Where the whole fighting impurities really comes into play is as a focal point for Jin questioning Nagi’s existence and the truth in her being a god. He questions why she fights them and what the purpose of doing so is.
The harem aspect of the series is minimal at best. There is little in the terms of a sexual relationship between Nagi and Jin. Nagi shows no interest in Jin other than using him as her assistant and house keeper. Jin shows little in the way of sexual interest in her, aside from the idea of being with a girl all by himself in his pubescent ways. There is one episode that deals with his problems in Nagi working at a cosplay café. Aside from that, it’s barely sexual in nature. The relationship with Tsugumi is one sided. They are childhood friends and she harbors deep and hidden platonic feelings for him. Her jealousy is held in check in front of Jin but manifests it’s self blatantly otherwise. She never confesses her feelings for him and mostly believes the story of Nagi and him being siblings. Zenge on the other hand is actively trying to seduce Jin, much to his horror. He finds her personality frightening and tries to fend off her aggressive tactics. Zenge’s true motives are never really explained but it seems she is more interested in stealing him from her sister than actually wanted him for himself. I always feared that the show would degrade into a harem story but the relationships between all of the characters never amounts to much more than what it was in the beginning.
The story is good, not great, but enjoyable. The characters are odd, especially the members of the art club, which are social misfits and otaku. The head of the club is a tsundere lesbian and another member is nick named Akiba for obvious reasons. There was one particular episode that was painful and unnecessary. They spent the entire thing singing at a karaoke box. The episode did nothing aside from showing the battle between Zenge and Tsugumi for Jin’s attention. The episode where Nagi works at a cosplay café could also have been left out, but it did serve its purpose to build upon Jin’s feelings of wanting to protect Nagi as well as confusing everyone about his feelings for her, thus causing more tension. The funniest event is when Tsugumi accidentally thinks out loud that Jin may harbor homosexual feelings for Daitetsu, which becomes a wildfire of gossip in the school and even escalates to a 4 way bisexual struggle with Jin at the center.
UPDATE: This series was licensed by Bandai and is available in North America.
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