Kannagi: Crazy Shrine Maidens

tl;dr: A manga that is solid in terms of its lighter portions but doesn’t handle most of its serious portions all that well. Kannagi is a manga that begins by a boy named Jin carving a figure out of the wood from a fallen sacred tree, and a girl named Nagi popping out of that figure. She claims to be the god that was enshrined in said sacred tree, but now that the tree was chopped down the protection she had offered the town was also gone, thus resulting in bug like creatures called impurities to wreak havoc. However, she still had enough power in hernew form to take them out manually and she wanted Jin’s help to do so. This is how the manga starts and I guess it serves as the overarching plot, but Jin and Nagi searching for a defeating impurities really isn’t focused on at all. Rather, the focus immediately shifts to it being about Nagi and her sister Zange essentially becoming local idols doing their best to gain followers as that increases their divine power. This aspect isn’t all that serious, and the end result is mostly just Jin, Nagi, Zange, and their various friends hanging out and living as high school students with various comedic hijinks ensuing while also occasionally having some soul searching teen drama. The drama centered around Nagi is pretty different from what you’d usually get in such manga as she’s a divine being having somewhat of an existential crisis, but it still kind of fit into the mold in terms of flow and such. The drama felt overdramatic pretty often and made things feel like they were dragging on at times, but the parts that were more slice of life and comedy oriented were decent enough. The cast wasn’t amazing but it held its own. About half way through the manga it starts shifting towards being more plot oriented with a larger emphasis on explaining Nagi and Zange’s divine background. There is still some light hearted and decent comedy, but it’s overall more serious too. I felt that the writing wasn’t anywhere near as good at handling this and overall things felt overtly messy and didn’t really flow well. It jumps around too much doing a bunch of random things but not committing properly and just kind of throwing away half of what it does. There’s certain value in doing something and reversing it at times and that works well enough when it happens with bigger story elements, but with a lot of the smaller details it feels like there was no point other than that the author changed her mind which cumulatively builds up to the story overall feeling really rough. It’s pretty normal for authors in long running manga to not know where they’re eventually going to take things and have to change course often in a forced manner. In such cases, I generally judge the writing based on how well they were able to write around the inconsistencies as well as whether what they were shifting into was worth whatever issues may have arisen. The writing here generally seemed to always feel like it screwed up in one way or another for some reason, and I have no clue why it was written in such a manner. There were instances where it would have been incredibly easy to write things in such a way that they didn’t really contradict what was already established but it did so anyway, such as the case where a girl that had been present from the beginning was suddenly revealed to not only have supernatural powers but to have had them from essentially the beginning but didn’t tell anyone because she was embarrassed, which largely doesn’t fit with the plot at all. While there certainly was value in her having powers at that point, I see no reason why they had to change the plot such that she had them from the beginning and show her getting them in a flashback, rather than just getting them when she’s shown to have them. It was going to be pretty abrupt either way, and how it was handled in the manga just added inconsistencies for no reason at all. There were also instances where some forced writing is used to push the plot in random directions, but I don’t really understand why the author wanted to push things in such a direction. The biggest example of this would be the ending, where forced writing is used to lead it to what would be a pretty generic but solid ending, but it randomly adds one more unnecessary complication that I don’t see the point of at all as it just kind of muddles things at the end for no reason. It doesn’t really add anything plot wise as there isn’t enough time to do anything with it, it doesn’t add to anyone’s character arc, it doesn’t really build on any of the themes. The only point I can really see is to have it be a joke, but I feel that’s not really a good note to end the series on. The ending is still pretty solid, but I’m left with just as much confusion as satisfaction, as I simply do not get why the author chose to do what they did. Character arcs were a mixed bag. Of the two main characters, Jin’s came across pretty well with slow and steady build up and a good pay off at the end. Nagi’s on the other hand was too tied into the messiness of the plot and didn’t work nearly as well. The best character arc though I would have to say goes to one of the side characters Hakua, in that it was built up and had just as strong of a payoff as Jin’s, but it also felt a lot more natural. The rest of the side character’s arcs were pretty weak. Zange’s was overtly messy because like Nagi the plot was constantly throwing her around so she felt kind of inconsistent. The protagonist’s childhood friend, Tsugumi, felt like her character arc was overtly abrupt because there was a long stretch where she had minimal presence and then too much happened near the end. With most of the rest of the main characters, Daitetsu, Meguru, and Shino, they all essentially just have a chapter dedicated to them and that’s it. Other character’s like Takako don’t even get that, and other characters like Shohou I have no clue what was going on as in the end things are written such that it feels like Shouhou should have gotten a character arc but I didn’t really see anything of the sort. In terms of relationship arcs the manga did a much better job and Jin’s relationship with Nagi, Hakua, and Tsugumi was each handled really well. The art quality I think starts off decent but over the course of the manga I think it improved enough to be considered good. The normal character designs in general are pretty solid, especially Nagi and Zange’s, but I think the special outfits, such as the divine forms, were when the art really shone.