Considering that Kannagi looked like a silly wooden version of Akikan! at first, it was a pleasant surprise to find that the series was less about harems and fanservice and more about good-natured comedy. I was attracted to the character designs right away, and I was pleased to find that the art quality remained fairly high throughout the entire season.
Story
Kannagi starts off fast and does well up until the karaoke episode. Unfortunately, the final 3 episodes are rather depressing and slow, as Nagi is mostly absent and the focus is on an especially moody Jin. This really breaks the momentum and gets away from the light comedy that made the first 2/3rds of Kannagi so successful. Furthermore, the final three episodes really shine the magic stick light on how flimsy the story in Kannagi is. There is almost zero focus on Nagi’s status or mission, and even her quest for more followers is largely ignored. Almost all of the points brought up in the beginning are ignored after the whole cast is introduced. The jarring nature of the final three episodes reveals that most of the plot was really just a set-up for the jokes in Kannagi.
Characters
Fortunately for Kannagi, the cast is very strong. Almost all of the art club receives equal time (except maybe Shino), and the whole gang has a very pleasant and endearing dynamic. While Nagi was my favorite because of her puns, I enjoyed all the characters a lot. Even moody Jin at the end wasn’t that bad, and the characters were a major plus for this series. I thought the 10th episode especially highlighted a lot of the great dynamics, especially with the subtle noises and faces that Zange and Tsugumi were making. There was not much I didn’t like about the characters in Kannagi.
Tilt
Kannagi does a lot of subtle things right. First off, the voice acting in Kannagi is excellent, and at times masterful. Nagi’s seiyuu does an especially great job, but everyone contributes. Even the karaoke was perfect and fit the characters wonderfully. The animation was very good throughout the series. Although the art was somewhat simple, almost every little detail was carefully animated and given motion. Little things like Nagi scratching her leg with her toes or Meguru shifting to read lyrics around Jin added up and left me with a really good impression of the animation staff. Even the cliche tripping scene at the end was very well choreographed (though still incredibly cheesy).
The music is very good throughout the series. The OP is catchy and the animation becomes even more amusing as more characters are introduced. I didn’t care that much for the peaceful ED, but I did like the Shirigeya Supermarket song. The BGM music was ok, and I liked a lot of the karaoke songs. There also seemed to be a lot of tongue-in-cheek moments, like with the absurd Lolikko Cutie scenes. All in all I thought the production team did an outstanding job of bringing the manga to life.
Verdict
Kannagi was a lot of fun and was surprisingly good. If it had been a 2-cour season, the lull in 11-13 would have been fine; unfortunately, with just 1-cour the reintroduction of plot at the end really killed the pacing and turned off a lot of viewers. I thought it was a reasonable way to end the series, but it wasn’t a lot of fun. Still, I would watch another season of Kannagi in a heartbeat, even if the plot were completely ignored again.
Kabitzin’s Rating: 4/5
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Kabitzin – who has written 1940 posts on Sea Slugs! Anime Blog.
One of the founders of Sea Slugs, I handle most of the blog admin tasks while wearing my I AM BOSS shirt. I like my action series well choreographed, and my romance series extra trashy. I also have a soft spot for puns.
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The humor is the best part of Kannagi. I’d been worried that the serious stuff would be a jump the shark moment, but I think it went OK. I do wonder how much of the serious story was inserted for anime purposes since not that much source manga material had been covered in a 13-episode series. I’ve only skimmed over the first two volumes, which were all covered in the anime so unless there’s something in volume 3 or 4 to have this serious turn the anime took, then I’ll chalk it up to “dramatic license” (which is what happened with the Fruits Basket anime, where the anime took a serious story from the manga, changed when it happened story-wise so that the anime could end on a dramatic note, and then changed one central character so much to support their ending that it would be impossible to do an accurate adaptation of the rest of the manga now).
Still, I hope that we see a sequel to Kannagi and that the manga-ka gets better and can produce more manga stories.
AstroNerdBoy: Actually, aside from Episode 7 (which was an anime original), Kannagi followed the manga VERY faithfully (barring some minor changes, like Takako singing an original composition instead of Macross-F’s Seikan Hikou). The final scene was actually from the closing pages of Volume 3… Which leaves Volumes 4 to 6 for further adaptation.
As for a sequel? It’s a matter of when instead of if, as the Kannagi DVD sales have been doing very VERY well — even with all the OTAKU RAGE going about in the Japanese boards — with more than 10,000 units pre-ordered for the first two DVDs.
I wonder if the DVDs have any special episodes or scenes, considering the animation and art were very good in the TV version and there were no odd fog/stamp censoring moments.
The DVD version has more wood.
I feel awfully silly thinking that the entire 13 episodes would revolve around turning Nagi into an idol which was hinted in the earlier episodes but never materialized.
ANN info recently revealed that, yes, there WILL be DVD-Only episodes, apparently since Yamakan couldn’t fit them into the season’s schedule.
Myssa Rei: O rly? Nice to know then.
Kannagi had some brilliant episodes in its run, as well as some awesome characters, but I’m not sure how memorable the show will be after a while. Would definitely watch another season though. :3
Well apparently the Seiyuu is in the hospital post-surgery or something… no idea what was wrong with her exactly, I hope it wasn’t anything serious. I think the anime has caught up enough so that there isn’t enough manga material to make another season.
I also very much appreciated the small subtleties of Kannagi. One of my favorite recurring things, was how everything Jin and Daitetsu talked to eachother at school, how you could hear the whispers in the back, and see all the girls with the shocked faces in the back as well. That and Tsugumi may be one of the best childhood friends ever.
I really like how Kannagi started. It was funny and light hearted to watch. My favorite character is Akiba.
However, as the series continue, it gets draggy and drama-ish. Jin totally doesn’t suit the emo role. It’s painful to see him being emo in the last 2 episodes.
I doubt I’ll watch Season 2 if there’s any.
Happy New Year. ^.^