Sometimes in anime, we are introduced to a fairly interesting premise only to see it almost instantly forgotten, destroyed, ignored or simply turn sour. Kannagi was a case similar to the types of anime I have mentioned, it started out with an odd premise but it showed some potential to be a good supernatural anime depending of certain events, eventually, kannagi makes you simply give up on everything you though would be good.

First off, kannagi presents us a story that is too frequent in anime, the good old school anime; I’d be lying to you if I were to say there was a more dominant theme in this anime. Sure, they might try to pass this off as a supernatural anime but if you take a step back and just look at the whole picture, this anime is nothing more than the story of a guy picking up a girl and making her live home.

Essentially, nothing more really happens, we are still presented a passable setting in with some ‘’balance of life’’ kind of things, but it never really kicks off, it’s mostly used as an excuse for the main female protagonist to be there, it never really kicks off more than that; this simply fact hindered the anime since it could have been exploited to some degree to create a good strong anime with more than just school life. As the anime advances it mostly started to resemble a cheap ecchi/harem.

But the real worst part of it all is not that it had some elements that were simply plain and overused, it was simply the fact it just felt boring in almost all it did and it just became more and more forgettable. There were still some good elements in kannagi, it did a great jab at creating a suitable atmosphere and a suitable environment for a school genre anime; there also were some acceptable humour at times which really made the anime worth it. Still, the problem to kannagi is that it doesn’t seem to lead somewhere, so even if it did have some acceptable jokes the anime in whole is nothing really ground-breaking. Some might like it, others won’t, but one thing is certain: this probably won’t be something new or remarkable for any seasoned anime viewers.

The characters in kannagi were not an actual benefice or hindrance to the main plot, you could have pretty much put any character into there and it wouldn’t make a big difference. Still, the characters were not fundamentally good or bad, most of them did follow a cliché but since they never really explored deeply the characters or gave them great backstory we don’t notice how much of a copy they really are. Some of the characters that do get a backstory either: don’t deserve one or get a pretty useless past that is only important for the introduction of new characters. 

One other thing I noticed about the characters would be that most of them bring little no nothing to the whole story, a big part of the side cast could have been condensed or reduced to create more interesting characters or simply get all the goods into a smaller cast so we get attached to them easily. As of now, none of the characters really left a great impression on me, some of the side cast gave me a laugh, but the protagonists in Kannagi were very lame. I just felt that if the story would have excluded some of the characters (the nun/the blond haired girl with her eyes always closed, for example) it would have made a better anime in overall.

The animation was actually pretty good; it was surprising to find something nice like this in something I thought would be uglier than the norm. The music however did not leave such an impact; some of it was repetitive and could get on one’s nerves.

All in all, kannagi wasn’t so bad, it has some elements that can please new viewers and can be good for some, but for most of you out there, kannagi will just be a mix of many school anime with a couple of new jokes along the way. It wasn’t bad, it was mainly long for nothing at times and seemed to go from nowhere to nowhere.