Just for fun, you might want to compare my review of the Japanese edition of Kannazuki no Miko from three years ago to this one. I bet at least some things have changed.

Today’s review is brought to you by Ted the Awesome and the word amai. :-)

Amai is an interesting word. It means “sweet” and is used, as one would expect, about pastries and other sweet things. In the same way that we describe someone as “sweet,” in Japanese a “sweet girl” will be amai just like a pastry might be. But amai has other meanings in Japanese as well. Where we would say “you’re too soft on her” or “you spoil him,” the word amai might be used. And there’s amai as in “naive,” which you find used in fight scenes in which the hero is confident about his/her giant robot piloting skills and the bad guy screams “Amai!” as they launch an underhanded, treacherous attack which inevitably fails to win.

So amai is more than just “sweet” as we understand it in English. It implies a kind of naivete which, in a mild case is simply indulging (another person) too much, and in its extremity is a sort of dangerous cluelessness.

This is all to preface this next sentence: In the first volume of Kannazuki no Miko, Himeko is amai.

She is sweet in the conventional sense, and kind and good – but she’s also dangerously naive and dotes on the people around her, giving into their whims without question, to the detriment of their well-being – and her own. As a result, she is forced into the role of victim by both the people she trusts.

Why, one has to ask, if both Souma and Chikane love Himeko so much, do they allow her to be bullied, outcast and victimized instead of stepping up and claiming their friendship publicly? Setting aside for the moment the fact that Kaishaku’s writing skills are total ass, lol, let’s look at this objectively.

If either Chikane or Souma *had* stepped forward and said – get your hands off her, she’s my important friend, okay, maybe the talking behind her back and bullying might not have disappeared, it would have at least been notched down. If BOTH of them had said “Get your hands off my Betty!” the rest of the school would have backed off, and watched the drama play out with immense satisfaction and titillation. But neither does. Although both Souma and Chikane profess to love Himeko, they let her dangle, unprotected, on the edge of a precipice every day – only showing their “true” emotions when they are alone with her.

It seems particularly nasty behavior in the light of their professed desire to “protect” Himeko…when they are the reason she needs protecting in the first place, right?

Basically, both Souma and Chikane are fail. ^_^;

Souma’s fail is slightly more forgivable, because he’s the basic stuttering non-verbal manga boy. Chikane’s fail is quite literally epic, because she *knows* the whole story and isn’t giving Himeko a single piece of information. Ultimately she brutalizes her physically and emotionally, because in her warped view, it’s to “protect” Himeko from knowledge of the situation.

Himeko’s fail is that she is completely, totally amai. She allows the whims of others to take control of her life, she indulges them by not having an opinion of her own, she naively forgives even the basest behavior, and she never once takes an interest in the truth of what is going on. Not really.

The truth is that the the myth cycle the Orochi and the Priestesses are playing out, is quite thin. The story, really, revolves around the love triangle and Himeko’s victimization by herself and the people who profess to love her.

Tokyopop’s team did as good a job with the material as they could. It’s not a good story, nor is it well-drawn, but they made it make as much sense as possible. I applaud them for that. It’s not as easy as they made it look. The original was actually quite nonsensical. ^_^

Whether you like Kannazuki no Miko will depend on a lot of factors, but if you are the kind of person who goes by the equation zOMG Yuri!=Good!, you’ll probably like it lots.  ^_^

Ratings:

Art – 6
Story – 6
Characters – 6
Yuri – 8
Service – 8

Overall – 7

Of course, we’re all interested in finding out the fate of the second volume, which is slated for release in about a week or so. I expect that as it’s one of the licensed titles, it’ll see the light of day eventually, if not actually next week. Sadly, some members of the team who made soup out of this stone are no longer with the company, which is a genuine loss.

Let’s play a game, shall we? I’m going to review Volume 2 of Kyoshiro to Towa no Sora as if Kaon and Himeko were the protagonists. Pretend you don’t know they are not. Read it all the way through and then *honestly* commment about the series. Because my guess is, all you Kannazuki no Miko fans would LOVE Kyoshiro, if Kaon and Himiko were the leads, regardless of how junky it is. (Of course it’s junky. Kaishaku writes junk. It’s all they have ever written.) The bottom line is that you loved KnM for the Yuri kisses, not for the story, despite how awesome you say you thought the story was because the story made little sense and rape really isn’t romantic no matter how you’ve chosen to fill in Chikane’s motivation in your head. Since the Yuri in Kyoshiro is secondary, you all *suddenly* noticed that Kaishaku suck. ^_^

Here we go.

Once upon a time, there was a girl named Himiko. She was very gentle and kind, and a very talented artist. Because she was so talented, she was recruited to attend an exclusive school run by the charming, but overbearing Ayanokouji Mika. Mika-sensei ran the school like a harem, taking various students, including Himiko, as lovers. But her true interest lay with a girl named Kaon. Kaon was tall and beautiful and powerful – because she was not human. In reality, she was the human form of a powerful weapon, an Absolute Angel. Himiko and Kaon fell in love, but they could not be together, since Kaon was Mika’s possession. They stole moments together and kisses here and there, but all the time they knew that Mika owned them both.

One day Mika commanded Kaon to kidnap a girl, which she did. But she was weakened in the attempt. The girl was immediately claimed by Mika as her own, and given to Himiko to take care of. But when the girl’s previous owner sent his weapon to take the girl back, Kaon was too weak to fight. Himiko kissed Kaon to giver her “mana,” the energy she needed to fight. But it was too late. The other weapon, named Setsuna, and her owner, Kyoshirou, took the girl away. Kaon was punished by Mika for failing, and she and Himiko were once again kept apart.

The next chapters follow the girl’s adventures as she is returned to Kyoshiro, but not left at peace. She learns that she too is an Absolute Angel, something that she simply can’t handle, having thought she was human all along.

And then, Mika and Kyoshirou’s crazy older brother shows up. Everything is about to change.

Ratings:

Art – 7 Orders better than usual. I wonder what happened.
Story – 7
Characters – 7
Yuri – 7 Don’t forget that Mika is an EPL, too
Service – 7

Overall – 7

Admit it. If Kaon and Himiko were the protagonists, you’d love this story and wouldn’t be able to sit still waiting for Volume 3. Yuri fandom is willing, able and wanting to watch absolute crap (cognitive dissonance will assure us that it is good, as long as we liked it, anyway) as long as the lead characters are a Yuri couple.  ^_^

Kannazuki no Miko isn’t as good, and Kyoshiro isn’t as bad as you think you think. ^_^