Kamisama Kiss, released in a DVD collection from MVM, is a romantic fantasy comedy with a heart of gold. The series follows a young girl called Nanami Momozono and her many mis adventures. Thrown out of her house due to her father’s debt, she wallows away in a near by park with what’s left of her belongings. Alone and sad she hears the cries of a strange man (Mikage) stuck up a tree and comes to his aid, in return he offers her his home, but with a twist.

Here is where the series gets its fun charm, for Mikage’s home was not any place but a shrine, a shrine home to a few unusual demons. We are introduced to first the small willow wisps called Onikiri and Kotetsu, cute and hopelessly clueless they welcome Nanami to the shrine in hopes of getting the place back to its former glory. But not all are happy with the new guest. Mikage’s main attendant Tomoe, a pretty and extremely moody fox demon, trying to escape his fate of looking after the shrine. So starts our MC’s love/hate relationship with the suave and grumpy fox demon while trying to stay alive in the dark world of Japanese demons and spirits.

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The main cast are fun to watch when interacting with each other, with lots of slapstick humor on the side. We are introduced to a variety of interesting demons each episode trying to eat the MC for her power, mostly male of course we can’t have a romantic comedy without a few rivals. Ultimately though, the scenes with only Nanami and Tomoe are the most fun to watch, the bickering and romantic tension make most of the show and seeing Nanami not always being rescued from the “demon of the week” is refreshing. It lives up to its shojo tag and will delight those who enjoy romance, even if it seems at times that Nanami will end up with a harem after collecting so many Bishōnen demons.

The only fault I can find in the series is the gaps in humor, it can’t always work out at times whether to keep with the comedy or have a serious romance moment. As a result the comedy at time can be cringe worthy and disjointed with the main story. Once the story starts running though the series gets on track with seeing the main cast interact better than before. Even the side characters become more interesting whenever they show up to cheer or hinder Nanami.

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Now to the english voice cast, Nanami (voiced by Tia Ballard) puts on a good act as a hyperactive girl but sadly at times because of the fast paced comedy she becomes hard to listen to. In trying to keep up with the large amount of speech in the series she starts to sound monotonous, mixed with the hyper active tone its gets hard to hear. Tomoe (J. Michael Tantum) is a delight to the ears, his calm and sauve portrait of this greedy fox is entertaining. When interacting with Nanami he counteracts her hyper voice well and makes seeing them interact with each even better. The demons Kurama (Sean O’connor), Mizuki (Solusod, Micah), Onikiri (Saxton, Jad) and Kotetsun (Josh Grelle) all play their roles well with a variety of evil and at times adorable voices. The english voice cast for this series is picked well and it is rare to find a cast that interact with each other so perfectly in a romantic comedy anime.

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Review Summary

Over all the series is sweet and fun to watch with enough japanese fantasy that would entertain even the most die hard fantasy buff. The cast are fun to watch and all have their own faults and stories to entertain. I would recommend this show to anyone who wants to see a cute, relaxing and fun romance series.