Anime: Kamisama Dolls

I always like watching something out of the ordinary, just for the sake of being uncommon, unorthodox, or generally something not boring for being the same old story. This anime has zero interest in this department as it is full of clichés and stereotypes I have seen a million times already, following the safe and easy route to present a very light mystery/fantasy story around simple people doing simple stuff. It also messes up even in trying to be stereotypical since it does very little with its own potential.

The first thing that hit bad with me was the name; there was a similarly named anime airing along with it called Kamisama Memo-chou. I know the stories are very different but there are still similarities in terms having sci-fi, fan service, mystery, and a dork male protagonist. And they both sucked. It felt like I was watching two versions of the same badly-handled archetype airing at the same time! Damn anime industry; stop rehashing the same old stuff so obviously!

Ok, let’s leave the whole name thing to the side and try to see the show as a stand alone. Let’s focus on the production values… which are cheap as heck. Studio Brain’s Base can definitely do better but in this case it didn’t care much. The amount of stills and jerky animation is alarming, since there is very little motion going around, even in scenes that deserve a lot. It is all obvious from the opening video alone. You probably know how the animation in openings is far better than the actual show. Well even this one is 95% lazily drawn frozen images with a few cheap visual effects to barely flavor it. The letters were also so small; who will be able to read them (assuming he can read Japanese)? And the song was average; I like the female singer as a voice but her songs ain’t my thing at all; they all have this gloomy sadness which makes me feel bad while trying to emerge into the setting.

And now a few words about the director of the show, as means to prepare yourself for what to expect from the story. Kishi Seiji has handled both good and bad shows alike, although it is true he hasn’t really directed anything with a complicating storyline in an awesome way. His style is to keep everything simple, funny, and with disjoined scenes. Although many loved his work on shows like Sunred, Angel Beats, or Persona 4, nobody can deny that there was no real flow in the narrative; he just jumped from one scene to another with little effort in continuity. And guess what, this show is like that as well.

The first signature of “disjoined continuity” comes from the way the characters behave. They can’t even blink their eyes without feeling embarrassed about something and getting all red and full of tension. I understand it is done to show how innocent, insecure, and frail they are but COME ON they are supposed to be people who have witnessed some pretty serious and bad things in their lives. They should be acting somewhat differently, more mature/crazy/cautious or something like that. But alas, the director went for the Elfen Lied style and placed extremely innocent people amidst extremely tragic events and had them acting completely out of sync with their surrounds, as a cheap attempt to cause emotional response from the viewer. Needless to say, it felt retarded in both cases.

Speaking of the characters… can anyone even call them as such? They are drawn in a very generic way and personally I even find them unappealing. They take things easy WAY TOO LIGHT; you can see they are more emotionally moved towards the opposite sex (blushing and embarrassment), rather than screaming in terror in the sight of corpses, supernatural psychopaths, and cat-like robogods. By the way, this is not a slapstick comedy show to excuse it. It doesn’t even try to excuse how everybody else besides the main cast is completely uncaring or blind to several buildings and cars being destroyed daily. You literally see nobody else even noticing the mass destruction that takes place daily. Furthermore none of them are memorable for any reason and they are even repulsive if you are fed up with blushing ball-less protagonists, moe lolis, shallow bimbos, simplistic battles, and anything that is average in general. More specifically:

The lead male is a spineless harem idiot that keeps bumping on girls, like so many thousands of others that have overflowed all modern teen shows. I am a GAR fan; this does not help me to sympathize with him and it sure does not offer the show any more depth or subtlety. Does anyone actually like this dork archetype? He can’t even talk to a girl without almost bursting with embarrassment. Other than that, he has witnessed some really horrible things as I said and yet he magically managed to remain a dork instead of toughening up or getting a bit insane. This is so lame! See what I mean by disjoined events?

Furthermore I don’t even see his involvement in the story, since all the work is done by a cat robot and a loli. Why is he there, perhaps so we can see the story unraveling through the eyes of a spectator? That is so boring compared to first person narration. Or even better; having someone doing something that somehow affects the main plot. Did he do the tiniest action to affect anything? Sure, he befriended a guy who wanted to kill him with absolutely no reasoning at all. Here is EXACTLY what happened.
“Oh look, it’s that evil person who hurt so many people, and almost killed me and my harem chicks. Hm, he looks really thirsty. Here you go mr. psychotic mass murderer, drink this and be my friend.”
LULWUT??? It must be the Elfen Lied effect which causes the brain to shut off completely. I have no other explanation for all that other than him being a harem lead, bound by nature to be boring, unimpressive, and with a heart of gold, just so chicks and mass murderers like him for being a total blockhead. DUH!

The female characters ain’t any better; they all have a permanent blushed cheek effect and talk like bimbos who are afraid someone will molest them (brothers included). That is supposed to make them look cute and frail and also a cheap attempt to hide how boring they are. They gave gigantic boobs to the lead teenage girl that stay straight up even when she is lying down. Those things defy gravity! They also have her being constantly part of overused boob jokes, just to cover up her lack of intelligence. She is good for some Spanish sex but as a character she is blunt and forgettable; they just threw her in to be “Harem Chick No.1” (the blunt childhood friend who almost always get the dork in the end). Same thing can be said for all other teenager or adult girls who are defined only by how horny or sexualized they are and otherwise lack characterization completely.

But you know what? Neither the harem lead or the main bimbo are the protagonists because they both don’t do anything much in the plot (other than passively staring at events). So I guess the main character is the little girl priestess which is learning how to control the robocat. The thing is, the whole thing looks more like a joke than a serious and responsible task. She is considered to have a very important mission, to control an ancient machine that can defend her village from threats. And yet despite being attacked by murderous villains or saving people from flaming cars all the time, she almost acts as if the whole thing is a videogame. In fact, she even plays videogames with the exact same interest. Shouldn’t she be more scared or serious about the real thing instead of thinking of how many points she will get for saving lives? And what’s with the constant UGUU and klutz attitude of hers? When she is not trying to control the robocat, she is acting like a naive waitress. The director is only trying to make her look as moe as possible and disregards giving some depth to her otherwise interesting task. But no, the show ends and she doesn’t even gain control over the robocat, which was also this minor thing called THE MAIN PURPOSE OF THE WHOLE SHOW!

The lead attraction ends up being her cat-like robogod. It sure stands out from all the rest for its looks. Yet it is also a bad-handled character; not only it looks ugly but it doesn’t even have personality or free will; it’s just a puppet the little girl remote controls. It doesn’t even fight in any good way either; it just makes silly noises when it moves around like a toy for babies instead of feeling like an ancient weapon of terrifying power that could trash whole armies. Kamen Rider Hibiki’s disk animals did it far better. Other than that, both this thing and all the other dolls other characters control are equally mooks with no effect in the story.

Regarding the action around the robogods, although there is a lot of it, it is far from interesting. Besides the lack of motion in most scenes, there isn’t much choreography, or duration, or visual effects, or well done overall to pay notice to. Robocat lifts a car. Robocat flies. Robocat falls down. This is all you see. It was made to look even worse by making the characters talking apathetically and above all FROZEN STILL despite some really nasty things happening around them. Walls collapse, cars blow up, people are killed and the main characters don’t seem to care much; they just stare at the robocat with almost no concern and have the loli doing her silly UGUU sounds. Talk about DULL SURPRISE; what a great way to alienate you from excitement. So to warn all of you who may be misguided from the entry picture, THIS IS NOT AN ACTION SERIES. It is mostly slice of life, moe, romcom, and drama, with a few poorly planned out battles that mean very little to the plot. Everything plays out as easy going as possible.

As for the story, it is completely aimless to the point you are given no motivation to keep watching. There are villains with superpowers appearing and foreshadowing something that has very little impact in overall. I mean there was some sort of mass murder going on, and there is chase by some thugs who also have superpowers, and there is a twin evil loli that wants to hurt the other one, and even more characters and robogods are introduced in the last episodes that are supposed to offer something, and the whole DOESN’T HEAD ANYWHERE! It was all just ephemeral dull conflicts that are resolved with almost zero effort before ending with nothing major resolved around them. Ok, a possible sequel would help to resolve this issue (which I doubt will ever happen) but that does not mean I will give the story any credit for ending in the middle of nowhere. So imagine how much the storywriters tried to make it interesting by having the most exciting scenes end up being the tired-to-death soft ecchi ones, regarding all the girls having the hots for some dork. NOT AT ALL! Everything plays out like they are trying to make you fall asleep instead of exciting you.

I am not over yet with the complaints. The previews for the next episode after the credits are over, show puppets; silly looking versions of the characters saying silly things about the artwork of the show. Wow, this show is yelling its silliness all over the place yet it otherwise throws in mass murders and blowing up cars.

The show doesn't know whether it wanted to be serious or comedy and it sure fails to mix these properly. It is clearly NOT just silly or dramatic and the combo ruins both aspects. Thus the result is completely ridiculous; an immature teen show with poor production values that aims at people with very low expectations. Just throw in cute girls blushing, an idiot male, some excuse of a story, some bare skin, and let the suckers buy it. My impressions couldn’t be any worse. This show is a total flop. Spare yourselves the fail and don’t even bother.

ART SECTION: 5/10
General Artwork 1/2 (generic)
Character Figures 1/2 (generic)
Backgrounds 1/2 (basic)
Animation 1/2 (basic)
Visual Effects 1/2 (basic)

SOUND SECTION: 4/10
Voice Acting 1/3 (stupid)
Music Themes 2/4 (average)
Sound Effects 1/3 (annoying singing robocats)

STORY SECTION: 3/10
Premise 2/2 (interesting)
Pacing 0/2 (disjoined)
Complexity 1/2 (not much)
Plausibility 0/2 (none)
Conclusion 0/2 (too open)

CHARACTER SECTION: 3/10
Presence 1/2 (generic)
Personality 1/2 (generic)
Backdrop 1/2 (generic and simplistic but it’s there)
Development 0/2 (messy)
Catharsis 0/2 (none because of the open ending)

VALUE SECTION: 1/10
Historical Value 0/3 (none)
Rewatchability 0/3 (none)
Memorability 1/4 (stupid enough to kinda remember it a bit)

ENJOYMENT SECTION: 1/10
Total failure.

VERDICT: 3/10