Review: KANNAZUKI NO MIKO

Sadly, for every quality mecha manga like last week's example, there are plenty more like today's selection: one where it is merely an accessory to a lot of nonsense and bad ideas.

KANNAZUKI NO MIKO: DESTINY OF THE SHRINE MAIDEN, by Kaishaku.  First published in 2004 and first published in North America in 2008.

PLOT:

Himeko is a passive, insecure young girl who is not only friends with the class idol Chikane, but is secretly admired from afar by the handsome and mysterious Souma.  Her quaint life and happy friendship is broken when a strange eclipse lets loose demonic forces and powerful robot suits in order to try and kill her.  Himeko is saved by a combination of Chikane's kiss and Souma switching sides and fighting back the demons.  Now their fates are tied together by an ancient prophecy where the girls must seal the evil away...if it doesn't tear them apart first.

STORY:

Kannazuki no Miko is an utter mess.  Imagine taking the worst parts of half a dozen manga genres, patching them together crudely with duct tape, and dressing that up with a touch of skeezy lesbian smut in the vain hope of distracting others from your mess and you have some notion of what Kannazuki no Miko is like.

I have many issues with this story, and most of them revolve around one thing: Himeko.  She's not so much a girl as she is a sea slug; a spineless, wibbly thing that spends most of her time mentally beating herself up for not being as inhumanely perfect as Chikane and thus unworthy of anyone's time or attention. She is passive in every way conceivable and this makes her irritating beyond belief.

Not that the cast gives her much in the way of competition.  Chikane is unreal in how practically perfect she is in every respect, and the only thing that remotely humanizes her is the one quality that becomes increasingly creepy and problematic as the manga goes on: her desire for Himeko.  I don't see what Chikane sees in her personally, unless she's got a fetish for helpless creatures.  In a time before yuri manga became popular, this was the sort off thing that yuri fans had to settle for, but as far as relationships go it's insipid at best and disturbing at its worst.  Worst still, despite being the heroines of destiny, her and Himeko's efforts are overshadowed entirely by the dull-as-dishwater Souma.  Whether it's his piloting a random mech or pursuing his own crush on Himeko, he's there to overshadow the girls with his own angst.

The plot is meant to be a riff on the myth of the demon Orochi, full of portents and prophecy, but in practice it's mostly brief, chaotic mecha fights padded generously with boring lore and love triangle nonsense, punctuated at the end with an act of rape that is confusing in execution and infuriating in intent.  It's a terrible ride from beginning to end and it's one I wish I had never started.

ART:

Kaishaku aren't impressive writers, and their drawing skills are no better.  The girls look weirdly bobbleheaded and I suspect that due to a combination of their enormously poofy and overly long hair and their equally poofy and poorly designed school uniforms.  Like proper hacks, Kaishaku find plenty of excuses for fanservice.  Most of it is just the usual empty fluff (because you're not going to tell me there are plot reasons for having an extended bathing sequence with Himeko and Chikane), but others are downright tonally dissonant.  Why else would you have your two leads enter into a weirdly hot 'n' heavy make-out session before one sexually assaults the other?

You'd think that the mechs might be one place where their creativity could shine, but each one is just a different flavor of short, squarish, and clunky.  The mech battles are drawn entirely in close-up, turning them into a jumble of robot parts, explosions, and sound effects.  The strange thing is that the calmer moments are composed in similar bad, busy ways.  It's just a mess all around.

RATING:


Kannazuki no Miko fails at virtually every level.  It's a bad mecha series, it's a bad yuri series, it's a bad action series, it has bad art, it has a bad heroine,  and it's boring and ugly on top of it all.  My expectations were low, but this managed to fail hard enough to rank among the worst manga I've ever read for this site.

This series was published by Tokyopop.  This series is complete in Japan with 2 volumes available.  Both volumes were published and are currently out of print.