First Impressions / Kannagi

「玉音アタック！」 (Gyokuon Atakku!)
“Attack of the Emperor’s Voice!”

Episode at a Glance:
After Nagi breaks her magic wand in the morning, Jin refuses to buy her a new one since it’s too embarrassing and gives her a tube of instant glue instead. Outside, Nagi stumbles upon baby kittens and wants to take them in. However, Jin refuses to especially when pets are forbidden in his rented house, and tells Nagi not to feed them cow’s milk either. This prompts her to joke about her breasts being too small to provide milk, which she hoped Jin would say. Feeling that Nagi’s so un-goddess-like, Jin goes out to pick up a few daily essentials for her, only to return and find her wand glued to the table even after he told her to use newspaper. Pissed off as much as he is amazed, Jin starts lecturing Nagi about drying her own underwear right when his childhood friend, Tsugumi Aoba, stops by to drop off some homemade food for him. After explaining to Nagi that Aoba was asked by his father to help him out, Nagi starts wondering if she’s been a bother to Jin, who can’t believe she only realized it now.

While trying to explain the situation to Aoba, Nagi comes in as a completely different person and apologizes for her behavior earlier. Claiming that she’s Jin’s relative, Nagi adds that she grew up in a house where laughing and making a commotion weren’t allowed, which eventually led to her having split personalities. Aoba buys this story, but Jin doesn’t so he later tells Nagi that she can drop the act. However, Jin soon believes that this really is a different Nagi after she asks him not to yell at the other her about the wand. Jin then accompanies Aoba part way home, during which he asks her to keep Nagi a secret from others. Aoba agrees to do so unless something happens, and asks him to eat the fried eggs before taking off. Back at home, Jin concedes that he has to buy some glue remover and angrily questions Nagi how it stuck on so nicely anyway. Amused, Nagi comes up with a story which Jin immediately realizes is a gag from a show, so he blows up on her for lying to him.

On his way home after shopping, Jin finds the mother cat dead on the streets and rushes back in a hurry. There, he finds Nagi seemingly absorbing the kitten into her body after it passed away as well. She collapses soon after, so Jin takes her inside to rest while he removes the wand from the table and fixes it. When Nagi wakes up hungry later, Jin prepares her some instant ramen and asks her about what happened to the kitten. Nagi won’t say though, insisting that there’s no need to explain her deeds as a goddess to him, and proceeds to tell Jin off when he brings up how he’s feeding and housing her. Although Jin is only worried about her, Nagi brushes off his concerns, so he tells her to get out for being so selfish.

After storming out, Nagi runs into some kids at the shrine and notices an impurity affecting one of them. She then attempts to cleanse it but fails to do so since it won’t stay put after fusing with a ball. After a long chase, she winds up getting attacked by it in a subway station, but Jin suddenly shows up to save her. Carrying her home afterwards, Jin calmly lectures Nagi and says she has slow reflexes, prompting her to ask if he’s still mad. Jin admits that he is, but is used to putting up with people like her thanks to his father. When asked where they’re headed, Jin says back home because it’d be waste after he bought some rice bowls. Back at the shrine, the kids start suspecting that Nagi’s not returning the ball to them.

 

Next Episode:
「スクールの女神」 (Sukuuru no Megami)
“Goddess of the School”

Impressions:
After watching the opening theme a ton of times in the past week, I still love it to death — especially during the “baby face” and “driving” lines in the song (accompanied by Nagi’s dancing of course). Much like the first episode, Kannagi continues to have me laughing to death due to Nagi’s silly and stupid antics (and her attempts to cover them up), followed by Jin’s reactions. Accidentally super gluing her wand dead-center on the table? That was comedic gold right there, as was Nagi’s lead into a joke about her small breasts that she was expecting Jin to make, but didn’t. I was happy to see that the production in this series is a lot better than I initially thought, as evident in the screen captures this time around. Not bad for a series that’s not produced in high-definition. Also, I really like how there’s a lot of animation in every scene, so that the characters don’t seem so static when they’re just talking to one another. Much like the opening sequence, I just like it when characters move around a lot whether it be their hair, clothing, or hand gestures.

This week wasn’t all humour though, as they revealed that Nagi has a split personality. (Hedging my statement after reconsidering what 件 was referring to.) In addition to the lovable, kind of selfish, and always funny one we know of, there’s a much more prestigious goddess within her, which would explain what we saw during Jin’s childhood. As such, Tomatsu Haruka really brings out both sides of Nagi really well, so I still can’t say enough good things about her. I’m really started to take notice to the music in this series too, which seems to play at the most timely moments, drawing out both the light-hearted and serious scenes more. The music is actually composed by Kousaki Satorou, who also did the music for Suzumiya Haruhi and Lucky Star, plus the OP/ED themes for SEKIREI — much to my surprise. Aside from that, it seems like Nagi can’t do much without Jin, so I’m quite looking forward to seeing where things go from here. Judging from the title, I assume Nagi will be attending school next week, which should be a lot of fun. We should see more of Jin’s childhood friend Aoba Tsugumi (Sawashiro Miyuki) as well, who seems to have a crush on him.

Tidbit: It looks like the picture at the end of the ending sequence changes each week. Since the artwork there looks really nice and there isn’t much of a preview in this series, I opted to include it as part of the preview screen captures.

 

41 Comments

  1. Keep up the awsome work Omni and Divine. I been on this website for two years and i really like it, if i meet you guys in person one day i’m might give you some sweet presents
    for your birthdays or christmas! 😀

    Box Head
    Reply

  2. @ box head

    nasty… =S

    oh oh i just like the girls with short, red hair and they appear so often in animes (true tears, minami-ke, ef etc. etc.) but none of them succed in romance 🙁 too bad, because i always prefer them. >_<
    thought, in real life i wouldn’t be able to stand it only in animes they look cute and hawt! ^^

    tommy
    Reply

  4. This the show I look forward to the most this season. It’s light-hearted and original comedy, damn excellent!

    I assume that you’ll be continuing to blog this show throughout the season, Divine. It’ll give me something nice to look forward to every week. 😉

    Ashan
    Reply

  8. Hey nice review divine, I might actually end up watching this for a few more eps to see if I’ll like it more.

    I hope I’m not sounding too demanding when I say this, but… I really hope you guys blog Chaos;Head. I know you guys must be swamped with the new season and other personal stuff but it would be cool, even if it was a snapshot post. 😉

    Random Boy
    Reply

  9. god bless her hair stylist, feeling the straight cuts!! wonder how serious their gonna take this story though.
    plus laughing my ass off at all the fiends asking bout “chaos head”, it would be funny if it sucked

    BROOKLYN otaku
    Reply

  10. @ BROOKLYN otaku

    Hehe, fiends? a bit harsh, don’t you think? Well if Chaos;Head does suck, oh well its not like its the end of the world, duh. Have fun laughing fun laughing if it does though. w/e

    To stay keep on topic, the Haruhi style music is way perfect for this series, awesome. =]

    Random Boy
    Reply

  19. “Nagi’s lead into a joke about her small breasts that she was expecting Jin to make, but didn’t”

    Hahaha, when was that? I can’t wait to see this subbed, I feel like I missed so much 🙁 And now I can’t wait to see her going to school. That will be freaking hilarious.

    Nazarielle
    Reply

  27. Actually, in the manga Nagi doesn’t have a split personality, it was part of her ploy to get Jin to forgive her for her antics.

    Dunno if it’s the same in the anime, but I wouldn’t see any reason for them to do it otherwise…

    vedasisme
    Reply

  28. hmm… so when Nagi’s eyes go blank, she goes into serious mode, but once the shine comes back, she goes into tsun-tsun mode? hmm… hardly realised this until I rewatched the entire episode. Prolly wouldn’t have realised it unless I had accidentally paused it when Jin was asking her about the kittens.

    Nonetheless, amazing episode. I love Nagi’s seiyuu and her voice range!!!! We have the OP voice, the playful Nagi voice, the serious Nagi voice, and the Ed voice…wow…

    By the way, does anyone else find her ED voice similar to Mamiko Noto? Prolly because she was singing in falsetto. Her playful Nagi voice reminds me of Koshimizu Ami + Emiri Katou. As for her OP voice… also sounds very familiar, just can’t figure out which seiyuu she reminds me of.

    Jayars
    Reply

  32. I’d have to agree that the movement shown throughout the episode really makes the show better. And yes Nagi does not really have a split personality. I was just something she made up to get out of trouble be then got caught by Jin. I got a good laugh out of the Dragonball and Sharapova reference. All in all a great second episode.

    Fayted
    Reply

  34. I’m still inclined to believe that she really does have two personalities, due to Jin’s clear exclamation of “Nijuu Jinkaku” 「二重人格」(dual/split personalities) and Nagi’s eyes changing when she reverted to her selfish self.

    To me, they made it relatively clear that this Nagi is somewhat different from this one (the scene right after her eyes changed).

    If this was just to lead us on and the manga indicates otherwise down the road, fair enough; however, the summary I gave above is as they portrayed things. This wasn’t an assumption I made because I couldn’t understand the dialogue or anything, but quite the contrary.

    divine
    Reply

  38. I don’t think she actually has a split personality. From what I could hear, Nagi asked Jin not to scold the “other” Nagi for the situation with the stick(thus faking it). It had nothing to do with the house story that she was talking about to Aoba as far as I could tell.

    vinec
    Reply

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *