The Day I Became a God

Catastrophe. Jun Maeda, known for more solid works like Kanon and Angel Beats, has vowed to make this series the saddest anime ever. He succeeded, but perhaps not in the way he intended. Not a single tear was shed, but lamenting and mourning the tragic handling of one self-proclaimed divine girl's story was on my agenda week after week. The outright mistakes and perpetual bad habits that "adorn" Maeda's work are present here, too, with an extra de-luxe helping. The contrived catastrophic scenario from the opening episode looms over the audience's heads like a sword of Damocles... only to find out that this sword is nothing but rubber, so we end up spending the first two-thirds of the running time digesting stretched out cotton candy with zero subtext over and over again! The light-hearted part not only gives us no character depth, explains nothing, and establishes no solid value or connection between us and the characters, but also evokes no (negatively sad or positively funny) emotions: zero, null, nothing, nada, zilch. One would expect to witness at least a minimal effort to build a complete picture, where each piece is at least a tiny part of a designed puzzle, but the authors said "NO!". Darling, why do we have to watch 100% irrelevant episodes about the parents of an extremely minor character? Or how we played a tournament inside out? Who on earth thought it would be a good idea to occupy the stage so often with a sleazy lawyer whose importance and presence among a bunch of kids is as appropriate as a snow cannon on the beach? There's supposedly a romantic storyline in there somewhere, but it takes a microscope and an explanation from a distant dimension called "Cowpoke" for it to make any sense. The return to a more serious part of the anime shouldn't surprise anyone, but the slightly more naive must be at least a little dismayed that even this passage is pitifully empty. Nothing, I mean nothing works: the attempts to heighten the emotion by inserting the theme music with each successive repetition were an undercurrent throughout this entire tragicomedy, the stupidity and non-existent nature of the vast majority of the characters was almost unbelievable, and it was at this point that I began to realize that this was indeed the end, the end of the ghost anime world. I didn't really care how it all ended, I just wanted it to be over already. I was in fact happy with the format, but I hadn't seen such a threadbare misery and demonstration of ineptitude in a long time. You should be ashamed of yourself, Maeda. A better 1 star (26/12/2020)

Jun Maeda has delivered what I expected from him and did not disappoint me. Do you think the beginning was pointless? If you are familiar with the emphasis in Maeda's work, then you are not going to think it was pointless (if you are not familiar, then you need to go to Wikipedia and read up on it in plain English...), and in the end, everything came together and made sense in my opinion. Yes, it probably has a very unremarkable beginning and is one of the author's more ordinary stories. Do you think that the main female protagonist was irritating and hyperactive? Well, her being extremely irritating and hyperactive throughout the season was essential to the story and contrasted beautifully with the final storyline. Of course, in my defense, I have had a thing for spirited girls in robes since A Certain Magical Index, however, that is beside the point... From a rather understated beginning, full of everyday and extraordinary things, we slowly get to the big reveal, and there is a perhaps very hurried escalation, predictable heartache, and then the bittersweet ending, where the author tries to show what really matters to him, and what he was going for. I thought it all worked out pretty well, although I was not as moved by the heart-wrenching ending as in other Maeda's work (because it was quite predictable this time), however, I think the poignancy and final catharsis came through. So even though it was probably the most unexceptional, and maybe the weakest of Maeda’s works, as I wrote at the beginning, it did not disappoint me and I think it did what it set out to do. Also, the animation and soundtrack were very nice. 8/10. (26/12/2020)