/anime/20447/noragami
> You who would desecrate this land of rising sun. With my advent, I, the Yato God, lay waste with Sekki, and expel thy vast defilement. Rend!
The first episode marks the first contact between two main characters, Yato and Hiyori. Yato is a God and Hiyori is a half-phantom, as in her soul slips out of her body involuntarily. The second episode introduces our third main character who's going to be the main focus for the next 7 episodes, Yukine. And the third episode gives you some details about the Phantoms, their nature, and all the supernatural stuff. This is also where we get to see the pessimistic and unknown side of Yato. And then the rest of the episodes happen.
Noragami solely revolves around these three characters and their relationship. Everything outside them is a potential plot that will or might get explored further in the story. The characters strike a good balance between funny and serious, though the punchline of most funny scenes is more or less the same, "Yato has sweaty hands". But the exaggerated facial expressions and VA performances will make up for that. The visuals were pretty good. It gets action good enough to immerse but nothing amazing to remember. It's not a visual assault on your eyes with extremely fast paced cuts but it's not a slideshow either. It's mostly clear, builds to one power move and delivers it.
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The absolute bop of an OST
The OST is probably one of the unique aspects for this show. It's really distinct from your usual anime soundtrack. I'm not sure what genre it falls under, but there's a good amount of strings, flutes, tabala, and rap. And not just in a single song, the entire album is pretty unique. It's probably one of the most stylistic OSTs you hear in anime.
While we're on the audio department; just look the
VAs for this show. The cast performances are nothing short of excellent; especially Yuuki Kaji as Yukine, and Kamiya Hiroshi as Yato. They handle shift from funny to serious and back to funny really well. But I should especially give Yuuki Kaji special props, just for his performance in Episode 9.
Spoiler, click to view
Yukine's divine punishment is still one of the most gut wrenching emotional scenes I've seen in all anime. From the story slowly picking up on Yukine's trauma and flaws, his relationship with Yato gradually become a son/father duo, and Yukine confessing all of his sins and becoming better; it feels really rewarding that after all his wrongdoings he finally able to be better. And I'll say it again, I can't imagine anyone other than Yuuki Kaji pulling that off.
While it's certainly able to be entertaining through out, it isn't really coherent in it's plot. One of the biggest drawback to this anime is that it lacks a sense of direction. It feels episodic, it feels like it's building up to something yet it never takes off. From the phantoms possessing souls, to memory loss, to revenge; it feels like it's just playing around in this really interesting world.
Spoiler, click to view
The last 3 episodes were arguably my least favorite, despite the most action packed and probably serious plot. Hiyori forgetting about Yato is a real curve ball. It fits the situation considering Yato thinking about cutting his ties, it just doesn't give it the time it deserves.
It could've explored more on Hiyori's nature as half phantom, or at least find her way back to be normal, which was the original hook of the show which it completely abandoned. It still finds ways to keep things engaging but never reachs it's full potential.
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Conclusion
As a whole, Noragami is entertaining. It got good characters, fine VA performances, unique soundtrack, better-than-average action scenes, and good visuals. But it's lack of commitment to explore an interesting story routes and general lack of sense of plot leaves much to be desired.
