What They Say:
Sora’s finally awake, and well enough to explain why she arrived at the Narukami’s home in such a state: her friend, Jinguji Hikaru, was being threatened by a loan shark for the failure of her family’s ramen restaurant. However, they have the power of anime and god on their side in the form of pint-sized Hina, who -in her role as the omniscient god Odin- has a plan in mind to help save Heavensward Ramen from further falling from grace. Will Hikaru be able to change the restaurant, or will it continue to fall?
The Review
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers):
Episode three – “The Day the Angel Falls” picks up hours after Sora is brought home by her friend, Jinguji Hikaru. As she stirs, Yota calls for the family to come in, and it’s at this time that viewers learn that Sora fell while running away from a debt collector who was after Jinguji, who also happens to be a Film Club alum from Sora’s school.
As with previous issues, Odin decides to step up to the plate, declaring that she’ll help Sora, but is quickly rejected. Sora -who think of Odin as Hina- isn’t quite on board with the concept of this pink-haired child being a god. Yet, being the menace that she is, Hina fully steps back into her role as Odin and crafts a plan to help Jinguji out with her debt.
The problem is this: Jinguji’s mother has fallen ill, leaving her daughter to run the family ramen restaurant which has a severe lack of business. Coupled with a loan that has a hefty 300% per month interest rate, the Jinguji family is suffering, to say the least.
So, Odin puts her plan into action…via Yota, of course. What else is a god to do? And her plan: Yota’s going to go undercover as a businessman and help save the restaurant by showing Hikaru what needs to be done in order to revive business and turn things back to rights.
Yota, acting in the role of a forty-year-old “Ramen Restaurant Revitalization Contractor”, is determined to whip Heavensward Ramen into shape. But this restaurant is no angel: in fact, Yota decides to change it to Fallen Angel since this once booming restaurant has fallen from grace.
Thus starts Yota’s tenure as a ramen consultant, and actually? This entire series of scenes are actually quite funny: Yota, when left to his own devices, is a genuinely likable and hilarious character. In his disguise, this really shines as he comes up with change after change in order to help Jinguji rake in the cash necessary to pay back her mother’s loans.
All of this culminates in Yota’s new creation: pour-over style broth that’s dripped into the customer’s ramen prior to eating. It’s gimmicky, yes, but it might just work. Even better, it’s nicknamed the “Fallen Angel Drop”, and when it’s delivered, Jinguji is told to shout, “The angel has fallen!” to complete the entire spectacle.
Honestly, if this episode had been solely about Yota helping out a ramen shop, I honestly could have been happy. It’s a new character, it’s got good jokes, and overall, was a pretty solid third episode.
But then the show takes a hard right into a different plot.
We cut to the back of a car, where a hooded young man with silver is sitting, teasing and taunting the driver with aimless threats of havoc. Interestingly, he has fingercuffs on both index fingers, preventing him from using his hands. You don’t have to be a seasoned viewer to know that this character is Special with a capital “s”: his entire aura makes you think that a new character -potentially of godly proportions- has stepped on the scene.
Everything about this character is a mystery, and even after we get some serious development -at least in terms of an introduction and a bit of action- there’s still a solid air of, “Who is this?!” that surrounds him. the biggest tidbit we get is that his name is Suzuki and he’s Japanese. Other than that…nothing, at least not anything we can use to suss out the plot.
Smartly, Maeda, in all his skill, doesn’t linger too long on this new character: we get a few choice scenes, and then we’re back with Yota until the end of the episode, where we find out there’s a scant seventeen days left until the end of the world.
Episode three opened up a whole new can of worms with the inclusion of Suzuki, who’s first name remains a mystery.
Am I hooked? Well…I still can’t say a solid yes or no. What I can say, however, is that I’m more than willing to continue move coverage, if only to figure out where all these tangled plot threads are going, and how they’ll unravel in the end. However, that might not be enough for casual viewers who aren’t fans of Maeda’s works.
Still, I’ll be watching to the very end: I want to know what’s going to happen over the course of the next seventeen days, and if the world really will end.
In Summary:
Episode three of Kamisama looks like fluff on the surface until it isn’t. With a new plot thread joining the tangle of both the on-going plot and the solid development in this episode, there’s a lot to chew on as the series settles into its own and hints at a much more dynamic fourth episode. Still, casual viewers might find themselves dropping the series at this point: even the introduction of the very mysterious Suzuki -or the fact that the world is going to end- may not be enough to hook you into continuing your watch.
Grade: B-
Streamed By: Funimation
