かんなぎ Episode 02
Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens 02

SPOILER Summary/Synopsis: It is morning and Jin wonders if Nagi is still there. He hears her excitedly call him outside. He goes out where he finds her excited over two kittens she’s discovered, who’s “mews” woke her up. She wants to keep the kittens but Jin will hear nothing of it, saying that the kitten’s mother will take care of them. Nagi’s protests are ignored and she’s forced back into the house. Nagi wants Jin to buy her a new baton since she broke the one he bought yesterday. He refuses, giving her some special glue and telling her to glue it back together but to use newspaper when using the glue. When he returns from buying her a rice bowl and stuff, he finds the top-half of the mahou shoujo toy baton glued square in the center of the table and he blows his top as she makes up a story about what happened.

About that time, Jin’s childhood female friend Tsugumi arrives to pay Jin a visit after he skipped school and was so weird on the phone the day before. She hears Jin and girl arguing as she goes to ring the doorbell. Nagi pops out, which surprises Tsugumi and Jin is shocked to see Tsugumi, especially since he’s holding a pair of panties. After Tsugumi enters the home, Jin pulls Nagi aside and tells her to keep her yap shut so as not to cause more problems. Jin then tries to tell the uncomfortable Tsugumi a cover story, but is interrupted by Nagi, who now speaks with an ultra-polite accent and bows to Tsugumi. She says she’s Jin’s half-sister and that she ran away from home because of troubles there. Her story touches Tsugumi.

After Tsugumi leaves and is walked part-way home by Jin, he returns home to try to remove the baton from the table without much success. Nagi ends up telling the story of what truly happened (rather than the split personality tale she told Jin earlier). Jin is not amused. That evening after Jin removes the baton and repairs it, he does some shopping and discovers the mother cat has been killed. He remembers the kittens and races home, where he finds Nagi holding the dead kittens. She says some kind words to their bodies, then absorbs them into herself before passing out.

Sometime after Jin has brought her in, she wakes up and is hungry. Jin gives her his Cup Noodle to eat and wants to know about the kittens and what she did to them. Nagi isn’t interested in telling him and cops an attitude. Jin has had enough and tells her to get out. She takes her repaired baton and leaves, returning to her tree stump. Some neighborhood kids come up to play and they find Nagi to be weird, but they let her play with them. She detects a frog impurity on one of the kids and tires to expell it. However, it gets into a SuperBall and gets away.

Nagi isn’t going to bother Jin with this and tries to take the impurity down but cannot do so. She takes damage but is saved by Jin, where she then exorcises the impurity. Because of her injuries, Nagi cannot walk and Jin takes her home on his back. He’s still mad with her, but he understand that Nagi is the way she is, and her actions are apparently a lot like his father’s. Besides, he just bought her a rice bowl and doesn’t want it to go to waste.

Thoughts/Review: This anime is a bit tough to place on where it wants to be. Clearly, Nagi is a hoot of a character at times. She has a love of Japanese puns, she’s verbally and physically abusive to Jin at times, she loves TV, her normal way of talking is pretty amusing to hear (I’m not versed on the accent), but when she shifted to the ultra-polite, elite form of female Japanese speech, I just laughed and laughed. Her antics can be quite amusing (the broken baton and the table for example, where the comedic timing is near perfect), yet when it comes to dealing with these impurities, one gets the sense that this deity is as fragile as a dried leaf. It certainly puts an interesting spin on things.

Let’s see, with this episode, we meet a new character — Tsugumi, Jin’s childhood friend. OK, now we begin to see the harem aspects I suppose since I think it is clear that Tsugumi likes Jin and he likes her. Of course, Jin finds Nagi attractive and Nagi needs Jin in order to live. That really doesn’t constitute a harem setting but I figure Tsugumi will be over more and more though. There’s at least one more girl to be introduced based on the promo art and that may be what generates the harem feel. We’ll see.

There are the sad elements in this episode with the dead cat and the kittens that died, causing Nagi to absorb them. I wonder if doing what she did actually weakens Nagi a bit more.

Regardless, I do find myself liking this fun roller coaster of an adventure-comedy series. Most of the story elements aren’t that special or unique, but Nagi is a fun character and the way things are being presented has been good. I look forward to catching up with the rest of the bloggers on this (not that doing so matters mind you) and seeing where things go.