KamiKatsu: Working for God in a Godless World

Episode 8

Well, that was an unexpected week off. Typically, a sudden delay in the middle of a season isn't a good sign for production, but I don't think it's worth giving KamiKatsu too much grief over it. These days, it feels like any given TV anime is always tiptoeing right up to the precipice of a total production collapse, and at least this show made it back in just a week, rather than going AWOL like the anime adaptation of Nier;Automata.

That being said, the week away clearly wasn't meant to put any extra shine on this episode, as it is visibly falling apart for most of its runtime. Like some previous episodes, there are a few ambitious angles and isolated cuts of stylized artistry, but they are brief and patched together with the telltale marks of a haggard production schedule. Every imaginable shortcut is present here: belabored and choppy run cycles that drag on for too long, disorienting zoom-ins on low-resolution frames to mask unfinished animation, and multiple instances of characters speaking with their mouths closed. These are all corners the show has already thoroughly cut, but now they look even rougher when juxtaposed with the moments that manage to look solid for just a few seconds apiece.

This is also our latest foray into more serious drama and action, and like previous attempts, it falls pretty flat. Dakini hasn't been much of a character so far, and dumping a sad backstory onto her naked shoulders doesn't do much to make her more interesting or likable. If anything, it reminds me that there's a potentially interesting show in here, underneath all the semi-ironic jank and unclever comedy. Human sexuality, on both a personal and societal level, is a fascinating topic that you could approach from a ton of angles, especially with the dystopian future KamiKatsu has landed on. However, this show only takes itself seriously long enough to set up an easy punchline, so it doesn't have anything to say about sexuality, reproduction, or any of the ways that might intersect with religion or society at large. It's all in service of shoe-horning in a sympathetic motivation for this arc's villain and setting up some painfully unsexy sexual content.

Did I ever seriously think KamiKatsu would say anything coherent, let alone subversive, about the topic of sex? No, but as the fight with Dakini turned into the Dollar Tree version of mind-break hentai, my brain couldn't help but ponder what a version of this story with any ambition or ideas might look like. I don't need it to be a treatise on the topic, but even SHIMONETA managed to have some level of commentary amidst its characters baking cum cookies. Yet, throughout Dakini's story, all we get is that the show thinks sex is good and having babies the usual way is better than clones made by a 3D printer. Other than that, its entire concept of sex is informed by referencing porn tropes; whether it's womb tattoos, dubcon, groping, or anything you can find with a better art on Fakku. That might have been shocking a decade ago, but it won't move the needle for anyone who's been on the internet for more than a week.

Seriously, it's numbing how played out every aspect of the show's shock humor has become at this point. There's a lengthy segment of the fight with Dakini that turns into a scene straight out of mind-break hentai, and it's constructed so poorly, so thoroughly stocked by this show's standards, that it becomes a test of patience. Between its technical shortcomings, the tired attempts at bombastic humor, and its half-assed renditions of sex comedy, the show has completely lost any ability to surprise or scandalize. All that remains is the anime equivalent of somebody wearing an ahegao t-shirt to a convention, desperate for attention but too passé to get it.

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KamiKatsu: Working for God in a Godless World is currently streaming on Crunchyroll.