Kamisama Hajimemashita 2 – 02-05

This kind of Nanami is fine too.

Hopefully your Valentine’s Day (or Single’s Awareness Day, whichever one you celebrate) went well~. In either case, here’s some shoujo for your enjoyment.

I had forgotten how headstrong Nanami was. As shown over the course of the last few episodes, poor Tomoe must have a hard time keeping up with her. Though her personality is necessary for the plot (other than for keeping Nanami interesting), since it leads her into dangerous situations, but her heart is in the right place. When she risks her life, it’s normally for someone else’s sake. …Which seems like a norm in a lot of supernatural shoujo series these days (or maybe it just seems that way because I’m watching Akatsuki no Yona alongside this), but it’s still nice to see.

Perhaps it wasn’t the nicest thing for Ookuninushi to just give the job nobody wanted to Nanami out of convenience, but seeing how biased some gods are about a human attending the meeting (okay, one plus those fallen ones), Nanami was probably better off working as opposed to sitting around and having everyone potentially badmouth her. After she came back, they seemed more accepting, but they certainly weren’t too friendly beforehand.

Though on the bright side of Nanami’s development into the god world, her powers have been increasing. She can actually do godlike things more easily now that Mamoru is around (or even on her own in these past couple episodes with Kirihito). She’s slowly progressing with her power, which is nice to see since she was pretty powerless at the beginning and she would have been screwed if not for Tomoe’s help. She still kind of needed Tomoe’s help while they were in Yomi, but she got pretty far on her own. Also, now she can do things on her own with more confidence, unlike how she was when she was just thrown into this position in the first season. Yes, her personality helped her a lot so far, but Nanami was really out of place with her position at the beginning and there was so much that she couldn’t quite do herself.

On the other hand, we still get to see her struggle like a human too. It’s an interesting balance to see and while it could be fun to see Nanami turn into being like a god with complete mastery of her powers, a large part of the story is about her staying human (which keeps her more relatable, I guess). Nanami is willing to pay for an airplane ticket despite having free transport, and she still cares about school/grades, even though she could just live in the shrine and have Tomoe take care of her. Again, this is her personality at work, since she’s not exactly lazy and likes to try her best.

Tomoe has changed from how he used to be too, though a lot of this has happened over a longer period of time. He has been defanged by Mikage, and he’s definitely attached to Nanami now. Though everyone probably already knew that or saw this coming long before it actually happened. He’s still necessary to Nanami, even if she’s doing better at standing on her own feet now as a god, and as shown when he reinitiated the contract to make him her familiar again, he consciously wants to be at her side. Mikage is/was a matchmaking god or sorts, and it seems like he’s shipping Nanami and Tomoe pretty hard. Though Tomoe has some issues to work out before that can happen. Nanami has some more struggles ahead in that regard, but given her personality, she should be able to get through them.

It’s always interesting seeing how various anime and manga cover the issue of supernatural romance. Sometimes they just ignore that a yokai (or whatever supernatural being is in question) and a human have different life spans, but for Kamisama Hajimemashita, it’s obviously an issue. Nanami is a human deity, so maybe she’ll live longer than the average human (or maybe not, since Tomoe still seems reluctant to be romantically involved), but for other characters like Himemiko and Koutarou, they’ll have to separate eventually. Hopefully the show goes into that a bit eventually and doesn’t just leave that plot issue hanging…

The anime went into explaining who Kirihito/Akuraou is too, now. That particular twist kind of lost it’s surprise as to Kirihito’s true identity, since Suwabe’s voice is distinct, but there wasn’t much of one in the first place, since it was pretty predictable. A human who’s already dead, housing a spirit who wants his body back? There’s pretty much only one character that fits that description. Like Tomoe though, he seems to have lost some of his edge since becoming more acquainted with humans. Akuraou took on Kirihito’s request on a whim, but it seems like he really felt something after being with Kirihito’s parents. His interactions with Nanami might have softened him a tiny bit too. Not completely, since he still seems to have unfinished business with Tomoe, but he was really afraid of the dark and Nanami saving him from that seemed pretty significant.

Pacing-wise, they spent a lot more time on the Izumo meeting than I thought they would. But then again, the meeting was more important than I remember it being. So I don’t know if they’ll get into the time travel stuff that I thought they would since that section is pretty long, and probably deserves a whole anime season of it’s own. But at least there’s been progress with other things. Nanami as progressed as a god, Tomoe now admits his feelings (though not to Nanami herself), and Mikage’s motivation for disappearing has been revealed. It’s still a long way to working things out completely, especially since the shoujo genre seems to like to dragging things out, but at least the plot seems to be slowly moving forward. The character’s relationships are moving too, which is SO much more preferable than them moving forwards and backwards or just having them at a standstill.

About Karakuri

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.