Geneon is releasing another magical girl show, but this one has a difference.  In Kamichu, young Yurie Hitotsubashi isn't just a girl who can do a few spells, she's a god.  She's not sure what type of god she is, or what her actual powers are, or what she's supposed to do as Japan's youngest god, but she's a god none the less.  This is the type of show that Hayao Miyazaki would make if he ever had the urge; charming and wonderfully engaging.  This light comedy is not only funny and cheerful, but also creative and unique.  Taking place in a world just like ours, only a bit more strange, this show is a lot of fun to watch.

One day Yurie Hitotsubashi goes to school and confides to her best friend Mitsue that, well...the previous evening she became a god.  When their classmate Matsuri overhears them, she decides that she'll be Yurie's new best friend.  After all, Marsuri's family owns a temple, and so she knows about god-type things.

The problem is that Yurie isn't sure what type of god she is.  The three middle school girls go up on the roof during lunch to try determine what Yurie can actually do, but they're not sure how to go about finding out.  Yurie hears an old wive's tale that says if you reveal your love to someone when it's windy, your feelings will be reciprocated.  The young god really likes Kenji, a boy who doesn't even know her name, so she tries with all her might to make it windy.  Jumping up in the air and yelling "Kamichu!" she....makes a small gust of wind a couple of hundred miles away in the ocean.  Feeling defeated, the girls run off to their next class.

The little gust of wind starts to pick up strength and heads toward Yurie.  By that evening it's a typhoon, and the town's in horrible danger.

Dealing with accidental typhoons isn't the only problem this little god has.  She still has to go to school, and while she's never been a great student, this god-thing makes it even more difficult to study.  She gets roped into looking for the missing god of Marsuri's shrine, he's been gone three months and no one's sure where his is, and she also has to deal with the Martians when they land in the capital as well as handle crooked politicians.  Even after all of this, poor Yurie, the youngest god in Japan, doesn't know what type of god she is.

This is a great show, and one of the best things about it is that it takes place in a world that is just a little different from the real world.  There are cars and busses and boats, and people still have to go to work and earn a living, but there odd little differences.  This is a place where some sharks go fishing in their kimonos and cats gather in fields to drink and carouse.  Of course, you have to be a god to see that, but that doesn't mean it's not happening.  Also, there are a lot of gods, as many gods as there are things in the universe, but a lot of them aren't very useful, and some of them are harmful like the god of poverty.

The show has just the right touch of the surreal to make it interesting (and often humorous) but the main focus are on the problems poor Yurie has to deal with.  God or not, she still has to study and do her chores.  Then there's Kenji.  Will he ever notice her?

The creators were obviously attempting to mimic Miyazaki's style and tone for this series, and they succeeded wonderfully.  The backgrounds are filled with tiny details too, showing smaller gods going about their daily duties and air spirits floating in the sky.  Yurie even manages to fly for a bit in the first episode.  From the pace of the show and personalities of the main character to the high quality animation, this feels a lot like a Miyazaki work, and that's about the highest praise I can give any anime show.

Audio:

This disc has a stereo soundtrack in the original Japanese as well as an English dub, also in stereo.  I alternated tracks, as I usually do, and found that both tracks were very good.  The Japanese voices seemed to fit the characters a little bit better, but the English cast did a very good job matching the dialog to the mouth movements and putting emotion into their performances.  Being a recent show, there audio quality was very good, with distortion, dropouts, and other defects being nonexistent.

Video:

The widescreen anamorphic image was very nice.   There was a wide range of colors used and they were all reproduced very well.  The lines were tight and the image clear.  On the digital front, there weren't any issues worth noting.  Even aliasing, something that plagues animation, was absent.  A very nice looking show.

Extras:

The only extra included with this disc is an art gallery of images from the Japanese release.
 
Final Thoughts:

Though there's not constant action or a laugh with every line, this is one of the better shows I've seen this year.  Like the work of Hayao Miyazaki, this show is unique and imaginative and is filled with charm and humor.  Yurie is a wonderful character, a young god who doesn't know what she is expected to do, and the supporting cast is also entertaining.  The world that is revealed in this show is so much like our own, but so much different, a fun and endearing place.  This is a show that anime fans should try to search out.  Highly recommended.