KamiKatsu: Working for God in a Godless World

Episodes 1-3

The first two KamiKatsu episodes are broken. I don't mean in the way that EX-ARM was broken. That trainwreck was dead from the moment it was put in the hands of an unqualified director who did not know how animation worked. By comparison, outside of the horrendously ugly CG monsters, KamiKatsu's opening salvo almost looks competent at first glance. Why, there are even a few scattered cuts of technically proficient animation in these opening episodes. Judging by still shots or isolated clips, you might think this show is an ugly but unremarkable entry in the overstuffed isekai landscape.

However, it becomes apparent when watching those episodes that they've just been put together wrong on a fundamental level. The editing is a scatterbrained disaster, constantly mistiming cuts in a way that kills any chance at a joke landing. Seemingly every cut, every choice of framing, and every stylistic flourish is deployed in a way that's off the mark in a small but readily apparent way. A character will have a comedic reaction, but we'll cut away from their face before they finish speaking. There will be sudden shifts in art style with no apparent motivation that come and go so suddenly they become total non sequitur. An entire orchestra of wacky cartoon sound effects – from cowbells to slide whistles and everything in between – are deployed randomly in the middle of conversations in a way that feels accidental but logistically cannot be. It is a commendable amount of effort applied in the absolute wrong way at every opportunity.

The result is a surreal mess that constantly feels like running on a treadwheel at double speed. No line of dialogue or gag is given time to breathe, yet it never feels like anything is accomplished. What, in other shows, would be comedic scenes that build to a punchline become disorienting parades of motormouth dialogue and disorienting shifts into pixel art that make it difficult to parse what's even happening. It's such a mess that it's tempting to belabor the more familiar flaws, such as the embarrassing CG monsters that look like low-rent Unity assets or the multiple times characters speak without their lips moving. Yet that feels like kicking turds at the base of Shit K2 for how ancillary they are to KamiKatsu's early failure. Yes, those things are bad, and in most other shows, would be glaring flaws. Yet if they suddenly improved or disappeared, nothing about this show would be any less of a disaster.

It's only with the third episode that things settle a little bit. Sure, the editing is still a mess, and the characters are still shrill caricatures with all the charm of a yeast infection. The comedy is still aimlessly mean-spirited and built around the misconception that screaming and self-aware fanservice are enough to be funny. There's a belabored attempted rape scene that is played for laughs. The rest of the episode spends all of its resources putting the gender-swapped Bertrand into as many humiliatingly sexual costumes as possible. It's still bad enough to be the worst thing you'll see on a given day. Yet at the very, very least, the show's pacing slows down enough to introduce an actual story.

It's even a potentially compelling story, as Yukito begins utilizing his dad's tactics for gaining members to power up his Poke-God. As somebody who's consumed a lot of non-fiction about real-life cults and their leaders, I spotted some actual research into the mentality of cults in Yukito's scheming. Rather than preaching the Good Word about his worthless gremlin, he turns his fledgling religion into a source of community and support – offering healing therapy, access to better food, and safety from monsters as incentives for villagers to join. That's a tactic that real-life cult leaders – for instance, Jim Jones – utilized to amass their followings. In the right hands, the concept could be unique and interesting. It's still sandwiched between terrible comedy and laughable animation, but there's at least something there to give this show a flavor besides vomit.

Unfortunately, that's not enough to make anything in these episodes worth watching, especially since episode three's cliffhanger suggests Yukito just speedran jump-starting the whole religion. If the entire gimmick of the show has been effectively accomplished offscreen, then there's nothing left worth caring about. The characters are awful. The jokes are foundationally unfunny even when they're not being undercut by terrible delivery. If the show can't even deliver on its defining feature, we're in for a long, long season.

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