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I have a weakness for Japanese superstition and religion.  Kamisama Hajimemashita fills my need for this and my need for romance. This fantastic romance, pun very much intended, follows Nanami Momozono as she grows into her job as a Land God and as a God of Marriage. A mortal god is rare but not unheard of, they are rarely acknowledged by immortal gods and often fall pray to yokai. Luckily, Nanami has Tomoe, her familiar and ex-yokai, to protect her and teacher her. This manga follows the adventures of Nanami as she tries to prove herself to other gods, does her duties as Land God, and gets involved with the affairs of yokai. The taboo relationship between yokai and human is also explored, even by just reading this paragraph it is quite obvious who the yokai and human in question are. If you still don’t know who the character in question are I will give you a hint: I only introduced two characters so far.

In one word, I would describe this manga as, “Cute”. Nanami and Tomoe are very cute together and it makes me happy looking at them. Tomoe is a bit of a tsundere and always says the wrong thing. Of course, Nanami also does the same and since they are both prideful neither will take the initiative to apologize. They also both get jealous of one another, again this is very cute.  However, romance only makes up half of the story.

The other half of the story are the “adventures” Nanami has. She’s done a quite a lot of things: she helped a god fall in love with a human, fell into the underworld, defeated a god who was trying to corrupt a mountain of tengu. You know, normal Land God stuff. Various characters hailing from Shinto Mythology pop up in these adventures. This stuff excites me. I absolutely love it when Shinto Mythology enters manga.

As you can tell, I love the plot. But this manga has more going for it than just plot and characters. Drawing wise Suzuki Julietta, the mangaka, excels in drawing expressions. As you can see from the example on the right, the expressions speak for themselves. Expressions are often augment the humor as a funny situation can be made ten times funnier with the correct expressions.

As a review I am obliged to tell you both sides of the story. The truth is I can’t handle dogs this story suffers from minor repetition… Although the contents and the context for each of Nanami’s little excursions differ each time but more often than not Tomoe is the Deus ex Machina and saves Nanami from impending danger/doom. All so, after every adventure is over with Tomoe and Nanami’s relationship either gets stronger or more complicated. If it becomes complicated it is always then addressed and it is becomes stronger it will never fail to become complicated again.  This is a minor case of repetition. I barely noticed it while reading through the story my first time.

I like this manga for both the romance and the adventure.  Both are strong aspects that combined, makes this a very interesting and enjoyable read.  Once you start you want to know how things end. A memorable manga such as this deserves a good review, I provided the review now it is your turn to read the manga.

Read it here

Sources: Mangafox.com, Zerochan.net