Reviews for Destiny of Shrine Maiden

Story: Kannazuki no Miko starts off as a silly and mostly lighthearted romp with giant robots, mysticism, girls in love (with each other) and pretty art. Even having heard (but forgotten) certain spoilers about the direction the story ends up taking, I thought I was going to like it a lot. Unfortunately for me, the story takes a dark turn which I most decidedly did not enjoy. In particular it was the way in which the offending character continued to be self-righteous and another character rationalized the first one's actions which bothered me. Keep in mind though that I'm a feminist and I have a tendency toidentify strongly with certain characters, so if you can maintain a greater emotional distance it might bother you less.

That said, the rest of the story deals with themes of destiny, true love, and star-crossed lovers, so it isn't particularly original. It is kind of fun though.

Art:

The art is good in general, particularly the character and costume designs - crazy hair, lots of detail in the miko clothes and some of the bad guys' outfits, and attention to eyes. The faces are pretty expressive and the giant robots are cool. There is a lot of screen tone and a few random flowers and so forth. You can tell that they're really working to appeal toward yuri/shoujo ai fans, because those scenes are pretty detailed, though not completely explicit.

That said, there are a few panels where I have trouble telling what's going on, and I don't think that Kannazuki no Miko brings anything new as far as art goes either.

Characters:

There was one character who, for reasons stated above, I came to despise. The others didn't really make an impression for the most part, and a few were flat, not changing throughout the course of the story.

Enjoyment:

I really liked the most of the first volume, because it was so ridiculous. After the darker turn, I still wanted to keep reading, but I spent most of the rest of the time being angry or shaking my head at what the characters were doing. I would have given this manga a seven or an eight in this category if I had enjoyed it all as much as the beginning.

Overall:

Not bad. It's enjoyable in parts and it's pretty, but other parts might make you angry and the characters can be a little flat at times. Its attempts at darker themes are sometimes undermined by the over-the-top villains and silly giant robots. It's the sort of show you might like if you like yuri and giant robots and don't mind the dark themes.

I bought this with every intention of really liking it, however, I could not find one thing I liked. In fact, if I had not gotten both volumes, I would have most likely dropped this title after the first clichéd chapter. Story: The plot is heavily cliched for the first half of the book, then speeds up dramatically in the second part to where nothing makes sense and you are left wondering what is going on. It's just a series of unexplained plot points. There is no real flow to the story and it leaves the reader cold. We are told alot of things, but never really shown anything. The romance between the main characters I found to be forced and unbelievable. It didn't feel like yuri at all. What would have made this better is if the story was given more chapters and volumes to grow. Everything gets squeezed into two volumes and the plot really suffers because of it and things feel unbelievable.

Art: The artwork is decent and nice to look at. Nobody looks the same, which is nice. However, the action scenes lack any kind of action. Which brings me back to the story. If this had been expanded, leaving more room for action scenes and better explanation of what was going on, the story would have flowed better. Instead, the artwork oftentimes uses lazy transitions and stuff randomly appears without explanation. It makes the reader very confused as to what is happening.

Characters: The characters are cliched and pathetic. I could not root for anyone, because I didn't know any of them. People were randomly thrown into scenes and once again we were told things about them, instead of shown things about them. None of them where properly fleshed out and none of them grew at all.

Enjoyment: It took me 24 days to complete this, because every time I thought about finishing this, I cringed. It was a chore to read.

Overall: I was very disappointed. I bought this thinking it was going to be a great yuri story only to find out it has a broken rollercoaster of a plot and a pathetic cast of stereotypical characters. I would not recommend this to anyone. Only read if you are into mindless yuri, fan service, and don't really care about plot.

Deplorable and morally reprehensible on a myriad of levels, contrived and cliched to boot. Nothing valued is in this manga. Major spoilers ahead, because the level of depravity at hand is impossible to explain when excluding one particular egregious spoiler. The one spoiler that takes a potentially mediocre-to-decent manga, and takes a giant shit all over it. The one giant shit of a spoiler at the center of the galaxy which the rest of this dumpster fire orbits around. The groundwork of the plot needs to be laid out first to give proper context to said spoiler. Its hard to give an exact summary because ofall the identity issues this manga has, which we will get into later.

The gist is, its an old-school shoujo romance with badass giant robots, and the fate of the world at stake. Kurusugawa Himeko is at the center of a love triangle, with a yuri lover and a male lover fighting over who gets her. Himeko is also a sacrificial deity. A "sun deity", in particular. Which is contrast to the yuri love interest's "moon deity" status. The sun and moon deities are complimentary opposites/blood sacrifices necessary to enact the world reincarnation ritual. The sacrifices get to choose how the world is cosmically governed after the Earth's rebirth.

The two primary choices here are as follows:

A) A select few Gods will continue to inherit the Earth, and their power will have a much deeper stronghold this next reincarnation.

B) Humanity will inherit the Earth and self-govern without the rulership of Gods.

C (Technically)) Stop any sacrifice from happening all together.

One final crucial detail to note, is that Himeko gets to decide between A and B. The moon deity/yuri love interest represents B, while the male love interest represents A.

Fascinating philosophical dilemma, is it not? So much potential there. And so much at stake! Plus its yuri! And there's badass giant robots! I can't wait to see what thoughtful meaningful message the writers had meticulously planned ou---WRONG.

The spoiler not only negates any meaning that could have possibly been had here, it CORRUPTS it. How so? The sacrificial method. A "blood" sacrifice. Now, a blood sacrifice is harmless on its own. The Yakuza do it all the time, and its pretty badass when they do it. So then what's the problem? The type of blood. Virginal blood, of a high school aged gir--500 year old infinitely reincarnated legal demon loli. Very typical of Japan. Plus, might be passionate pure intimacy between two doting girls. But no.

The moon deity rapes Himeko. The sacrificial blood, is not only virginal blood, but is harvested through a sexual assault. And the "why" behind the assault, is the most disgusting reason. The "why" is to "protect Himeko from becoming a blood sacrifice, because she (moon goddess) loves Himeko so much". Which is glorifying rape as an act of grace. And she isn't played off as a villain either. You are meant to root for the yuri couple. So this manga is ENDORSING this point of view. That rape is an act of grace, and a necessary evil.

Not only that, but at the very climax of the story, Himeko has a choice between the two lovers. Again, keep in mind that the two lovers are also indicative of the aforementioned philosophical choices A and B (see paragraph number three). Now, because of the fact of the rape, any choice to be had is negated by the fact that A (the male lover) is the only good option. Because he never harms Himeko, and genuinely cares about her well-being. What a waste, since an unbiased choice would make the climax much more impactful. But oh well. Is what it is. OR SO YOU'D THINK.

Himeko chooses to ally with her RAPIST. Why? Because yuri is the purest form of love or whatever. Then moon goddess proceeds to molest her AGAIN, then attempts to MURDER her. Then even taunts and mocks her over the situation. All "haha I raped you and did attempted murder on you, fucking xD." And yet after ALL that, Himeko STILL decides she's madly in love with moon goddess and goes through with the sacrifice with her, killing the boy who actually loved and cared for her in the process. And its portrayed as this intimate triumphant moment. When in actuality, its a deplorable glorification of a trifecta of the worst sins one can possibly commit (rape, murder, genocide).

We haven't even gotten to how uninspired and all over the place it is. All this review has been so far is JUST the moral bankruptcy. But there's EVEN MORE wrong with it, albeit far more minor. Let's start with its lack of inspiration. Tropes, tropes, tropes galore. The damsel in distress (Himeko/sun goddess), cheesy bullshit love triangles, chosen one bullshit, indestructible Mary Sue bullshit, an entirely unexplained bullshit magic system, power of love/friendship is magic bullshit.

Especially when there's a lack of chemistry between any of the characters to begin with. Not one relationship in this manga that isn't forced. Positive connections, enemies, they're all forced. Soulless husks of characters too. All feeling like plastic dolls who solely exist to drive the plot forward.

Speaking of "plot", this is where the identity issues come into play. This manga has too many concepts, and not nearly enough time to develop any of them because of such a short run time. Leading to a disorganized absolute mess. Is it a shounen mecha war story? A cheesy campy shoujo love story? A hyperviolence tragedy with ecchi elements aimed at young adults? Who the hell knows? Certainly not the authors.

Plus again, back to the blood sacrifice thing. Allegedly, the rape was necessary so that Himeko can no longer be marked for sacrifice. But apparently, that's a crock of shit since she got sacrificed anyway! So that was for fucking nothing except shock value, and getting passed off as deeper than it is. I could list off more plot holes, but that would easily double the length of this review.

Credit where credit is due, the mechs themselves are pretty dope. Dope designs. There are some really cool shots in this manga. Unfortunately the mechs aren't put to good use, as the action scenes are super cramped and confusing. Hard to tell who's who, even if the mech designs are all very distinct from one another. There's also a lot of whiplash between the cheesy shoujo bits and the epic mech bits. Oh, and the space aerial shots are pretty dope too. And its not yuri bait, as there are girls who do in fact kiss at least once. Those are the only positive things I can think to say about this hot piece of garbage.

TL;DR, I cannot recommend this manga to anyone, UNLESS you really adore either mecha or yuri, especially the combination together, and want to see those themes explored regardless of the quality.