Kannagi 1: Shrine Maiden 「神籬の娘」

The episode covers most of the first chapter in the manga, with some extras. The airing time in Japan is actually different from most other anime. It's neither in the morning, night prime time, nor past midnight. While there doesn't seem to be anything unique about the series, I wonder what's the target age for it.


A child meets a shrine maiden. As a strong wind blows, the next thing he knows the girl has disappeared. After the opening scene with the dancing Nagi, the scene switches to a boy carving a statue from wood.

When he is about to go to school, the statue disintegrates, and a girl appears! No school today it seems! While the boy, Jin, wants to ask mountain loads of questions to the girl, the reverse is also true. When Jin ask whether the mysterious girl is a spirit, she punches him for his ignorance. She goes to a long winded explanation, which basically means she is a kind of goddess protector of the tree. Which makes her wonder what happens to the tree where she came from.

At the area where the tree is, the tree is gone! That means the wood that was used for carving by Jin originated from the tree that is now no more.

When the girl is still shocked by this, a centipede crawls onto her leg. I think she said it's not a normal centipede, and forbids Jin to touch it. Of course Jin then picks it up and throws it away. The centipede disintegrates, and he received a kick from our goddess.:)

Back at home, Jin wonders what to do now since it seems he now has to live with a girl for a while. He tries to divide house work, but as he explains the days of throwing the correct garbage (He should move away from Japan to make this simpler:b), he realize he would have to do everything initially.

As they watches a magic girl show on TV, the girl is inspired, and goes back to the stump of the tree where she used to live. Armed with a self-made magic stick, she does the transformation dance and exterminates some (spirit/impurity?) spiders. Happy on how things go, she revealed that her name is Nagi.

Next is some bath scenes (mandatory for these genre, I guess), which is quite funny too. And no, they didn't take a bath together:b Jun warns Nagi not to take the phone when he is taking a bath, but while he is enjoying her bath, he heard the phone rings twice and then stopped. Freaking out, he sprints to the phone with only a towel covering him. Thankfully, he managed to speak to his classmate before Nagi speaks. His classmate is wondering if he caught a cold or something since he missed school today. After the conversation, due to standing with no clothes, he sneezes:b

And finally, the long day ends. During the night, Jin awoke due to some noise. When he wonders what it is, he realize that goddesses needs to go to the bathroom too:)

Impression:
Nothing that has done been done before numerous times, but for some reason I like the first episode. Probably having a likable main male and female characters has got to do with a lot of it. Also the jokes are simple, and not overdone.


Kannagi 「かんなぎ」　official site
Opening theme song: motto☆hade ni ne! 「もっと☆派手にね！」　by Tomatsu Haruka　「戸松遥」
Ending theme: Musuhi no toki　「産巣日の時」 by Tomatsu Haruka 「戸松遥」

Note: screen shots to follow