Kannazuki no Miko

Title: Kannazuki no Miko Priestesses of a Godless Month 神無月の巫女 Priestesses of a Godless Moon Kannadzuki no Miko Overall: Buy Keywords: 2004, Action, Action Drama, Drama, Fighting, High School, Martial Arts, Mecha, Romance, Sci-Fi, Shoujo Ai, Spiritual, Supernatural, Swordplay, Tragedy, TV Notables: ASAI Kiyomi KAWASUMI Ayako Kotoko (I'VE Music) MAJIMA Junji MATSUMOTO Yasunori MINAMI Omi MINE Kaori NAYA Goro NISHIMURA Chinami NONAKA Ai NOTO Mamiko OOTANI Ikue R1 License - Pioneer (Now Geneon) SHIGEMATSU Tomo SHITAYA Noriko TANAKA Atsuko UEDA Kana There is a small town somewhere in Japan, surrounded by nature, in which is the home to a large and gorgeous high school, Otobashi Gakuen, which was founded to make the students familiar with nature. Kurusugawa Himeko appears to be a normal student, leads a bright and enjoyable school life with her two friends, Himemiya Chikane and Ogami Soma. Chikane is a daughter of a distinguished family. She is excels at both studying and sports, she is wise and beautiful, she has familiar personality and is the idol of the other students (of both genders). Ogami Soma is a childhood friend of Himeko. He has problems expressing his emotions directly but he is very sincere. But from Himeko's 16th birthday on her life will never be the same, for an Evil God has been set free - and Chikane and Himeko have to face the fact they're reincarnations of the Moon Priestess and the Sun Priestess, the only ones able to prevent the destruction of the world. But Ogami's fate is to be one of the Evil God's followers... how can he then protect Himeko as he promised? [TV series, 2004, 12 episodes, 24 min; based on the manga by Kaishaku (http://www.toshima.n­e.jp/~kaishaku/)] "神無月" (kannadzuki) is the tenth month of the lunar calender, literally "the month when there are no gods". 1:32min Series Opening - YouTube Video

Overall	Art	Animation	Character Design	Music	Series Story	Episode Story	Reviewer
Buy 4	9	7	8	9	8	10	Devil Doll	#
Kannazuki no Miko [Score: 84%] Drama: High (with the interesting decisions during the second half) Comedy: None/Low ("nya") Action: High (one mecha battle per episode) SciFi: Med/High (gods, mechas, reincarnation) Ecchi: Low/Med (girls in underwear, talk about breast sizes, and some scene during episode 8) The Series Story isn't that special: Reincarnated mikos trying to protect the world from an Evil God's mechas... probably not the most unique plot for an anime. The bad guys are really stupid, and the "monster of the week" syndrome is omnipresent during the first few episodes. What's in fact new for me is the type of triangle being set up here (with a boy and a girl falling for another girl early on). While I do like the drawing style I have to downgrade Animation for ridiculously sloppy presentation of people walking and overuse of stills - and this is even more unforgivable as this is an Action series. Then again, sad and beautiful orchestral Music (Ankoku no Yami no Naka de, Kannazuki no Miko theme, Senkou no Kanata ni, Yokoku) just like many animes of this genre tend to be. As for the substance I didn't expect too much (even though Chikane is more interesting than a girl of this much perfection would normally be). The last third of the series made me upgrade several ratings - what looked like an enhanced Sailor Moon variant for quite a while turned out to be a full-scale tragedy where the Characters have to make painful decisions. Even the side characters develop during the show, and being fewer than in Mai-HiME they get enough space and time to be interesting as well as consistent. So while not exactly being a second Silent Mobius, in my eyes this anime beat both Mai HiME and Aquarian Age by a significant margin. Last updated Monday, April 14 2008.

Other Sites

Name	URL
Japanese Language Series Web Site	http://www.kannaduki.net/
Wikipedia entry for “Kannazuki no Miko"	http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Kannazuki_no_Miko
Series summary (including plot spoilers); character descriptions and a summary of the episodes.