Maid-chan no Anime: Noragami

Konnichiwa! Maid-chan desu!

I will grant you any wish, for just 5 Yen! Delivery God *Yato at your service!
What’s a delivery god you ask? Don’t ask Maid-chan! Perhaps only Yato knows it.

Gods are created by the wishes of humans. Yato once was a sort of assassin god (god of calamity), but changed profession when the times got more peaceful. Since Yato is a very “small”, unknown god, he has a hard time. To get into Takamagahara, where the “real” gods live, is his greatest wish. For that he needs a shrine though and tries to earn money to build it.
5 yen at a time (wish).

A lot of jobs are needed to reach this goal. One day Yato is trying to find a lost cat. The cat is on a busy street, so Yato tries to pick it up. That is seen (by unknown, unlogical reasons) by a girl named Iki Hiyori. When a bus threatens to hit Yato, she jumps to his help.

Nobody is hit by the bus, but from this time on the fate of Yato and Hiyori are connected by an invisible thread. (Sounds like a romance anime line, right?)

This thread is the literal “lifeline” of Hiyori. It connects her physical body and her ethereal body. Or in words most humans can understand, her ghost. Because from now on Hiyori sometimes falls into a sudden “sleep“ (to her friends never-ending surprise) and her soul leaves the body.

From that time on Hiyori is able to see all the supernatural stuff normally invisible (or instantly forgotten) by humans.

But since it is quite inconvenient to leave your body behind without notice (something that can fortunately not happen to Maid-chan, since she has none), Hiyori demands from Yato to stop that.

Yato grants her this wish, but has a problem. He is currently busy with finding a shinki, a holy weapon only a god can use. And a god without shinki is easy prey for the ayakashi roaming around the town.

Luckily for him, Yato finds one just when he is in a pinch.

Shinki are former humans that have died but cannot move on to the afterlife. Yato adopts that young boy in front of him and calls him Yukine.

Yukine at first is very rebellious and has troubles accepting his death and his new role. He even starts to steal. Such a thing is bad for both, the shinki and the god the shinki serves. It corrupts them. (Maid-chan thinks of this like a memory leak used by a virus.)

But in the end Yukine gets cleansed and he and Yato get a grudging understanding of each other. This is the time when Hiyori reminds Yato that he still has to do something about Hiyori leaving her body!

Yato isn’t too enthusiastic even now, since Hiyori has helped him a lot with Yukine and he evidently thinks Hiyori’s problem is funny.

But first of all Yukine needs a place to stay, so Yato brings him to another god, Kofuku, a goddess of poverty and, in Yato’s words, his girlfriend.

Kofuku lives with her shinki Daikoku, a smoking, grumpy man who behaves like her husband, in a little shop. She allows Yukine to stay there and, despite Daikokus objections, Yato is not thrown out, too.

Yukine has to learn a lot about what being a shinki means, and Daikoku teaches him a few things. And while Yukine has accepted his death, he still wants to learn. He asks Hiyori for her old school books and her teaching help, so Hiyori ends up being a regular visitor to Kofuku’s house.

And just when Yato starts to search for a solution to Hiyori’s problem in earnest, another god arrives.

obligatory bath scene fanservice
And no, Maid-chan will not show you the one with Hiyori. Humans have privacy rights, you lewd bunch!

No, this is not Aphrodite, goddess of beauty. This is Bishamonten, the war god. She holds a grudge against Yato. Or more like a simmering hot rage. She says that in the past Yato has killed her whole household of shinkis.

Is that true? Maid-chan will not tell you, only that this shinki named Nora plays a big role in Yato’s life.

Summary

Maid-chan loves anime that use the dense and rich world of Japanese religion! The fantasy you humans have is incredible!

And while Noragami does not go deep into this, it creates a nice background to play the story on. Love and hate, hope and despair!

Albeit you can feel the manga background and the episodic nature of it, the storytelling is still good. Same goes for the graphics. They are not breathtaking, but the important parts are of good quality. And every voice fits with the character. The comedy scenes fit nicely with the fights and more serious moments.

All in all Maid-chan gives Noragami 8/10 points on the totally objective Maid-chan scale.

See you next time!