Tayutama -Kiss on my Deity- - Reviews

Tayutama is a cute little action romance that won’t dazzle you with complicated characters and plot but still manages to be an enjoyable watch. I should say first off if you don’t like your anime with a healthy serving of moe and ultra cute artwork, then you can just stop reading now and not even bother with this series. I liken it to eating cotton candy, while it appeared filling when you stuck it in your mouth in the end it’s not very filling. But it tastes good!

The overall plot is the weakest link in Tayutama. The series starts with spirits known as Tayutai, being released accidently into the world along with three very powerful evil spirits and the reborn goddess Kikurami who becomes known to the world as Mashiro. The male lead Yuuri's family runs the shrine dedicated to this goddess and is the descendant of the person who helped seal the three evil spirits with the goddess many centuries before. While I did find the initial premise to be interesting it doesn’t do a very good job in explaining them or any of the other developments that unfold as the series progresses. Way too often things are left unknown or lightly touched on as it moves from episode to episode. You start off expecting this great battle between the three and Mashiro and Yuuri but it never really materializes. It’s not terribly original and it has plot elements that frankly have been done to death in anime. But it doesn’t unfold the way most of those series do in regards to the romantic elements and that alone allowed me to enjoy it quite a lot.

The characters are solid but unspectacular. Mashiro is very cute and moe and is a likeable character. While she does manage to grow some as a character over the course of the series she really doesn’t get a lot of background depth and pretty much manages to stay within the male fantasy of the perfect obedient wife roll. Yuuri is typical of the male lead in anime, not terribly exciting and a bit of a self righteous personality who is a bit to moral in his values to be a real person. Honestly the first guy (of any age really) who would turn down the opportunity to sleep with a girl when she is basically throwing herself at you, is going to be the first. This is one of the strange things about Japan I just don’t get. They have all these bizarre perverse fetishes and echii and yet portray these guys as pillars of morality in an immoral world. It’s pretty tiring. The most interesting character and the one who makes the most growth over the series is Ameri. While her basic archetype has been done many times over as the tsundere best friend who can’t admit her true feelings for the lead, she comes across as sympathetic and a bit tragic. The rest of the supporting characters and the antagonists are pretty uninspired as a whole. We learn very little about them, particularly the pasts and motivations of the villains. What we do find out is very simplistic and disappointing.

The animation was quite well done and the magic combat is very exciting and fun to watch. Character designs are going to be hit or miss with people. I found them to be very cute but others are going to think they are "too cutesy". I can see both points of view. Artistically it reminds me a lot of the art from Shuffle!. The music is definitely the highlight of the program. Both OP/EN songs fit the tone of the series are were very fun to listen to. The cast is made up of largely unknown and relatively new seiyuu. I found this to be very refreshing as it was nice to hear some new voices for a change and their performances were all very good.

In the end, I just don’t understand someone who really hates this series. It was a pleasant little romance adventure story that ended sweetly and kept my attention. Is it an all time classic? Hell no, but it was a fun and entertaining adventure. You could do a lot worse than this.

Where to start with this anime... Basically, it's a pretty average, not very original ecchi/harem anime that involves a high school student named Yuuri Mito finding a relic of some sort that was dug up, and then later coming back to it at night and bringing his friends with him to the relic to perform a ritual on it. One of his friends, who is named Ameri Kawai, ends up getting on a motorcycle that Yuuri brought earlier in order to leave, and instead ends up smashing into the relic with it on accident, breaking it and causing a bunch of evil/misguided beings called "Tayutai" out, along with a white haired little girl with a giant hammer called Mashiro Mito.

This girl shows up and almost instantly begins running around acting crazy, trying to beat up tiny little Tayutai. After losing a quick battle, the tiny Tayutai reform/learn the error of their ways and become allies almost instantly. After a short while, Mashiro suddenly grows up into a grown woman due to regaining her energy, and decides she likes Yuuri and that she wants to marry him. That's basically the gist of the beginning of this anime. It's uh...very fast paced and doesn't go too much into character development or anything due to the fact that there are only twelve episodes, but I guess that can't really be helped.

As stated earlier, the story in this anime is very original and although this is just a matter of opinion, there was not really any "twists" that you wouldn't have been able to predict unless you were extremely new to anime in general. If you want me to sum the main story up...some girls and a guy beat up three evil Tayutai in between going to school and doing normal activities. Now I know I have been pretty harsh on this anime, but I honestly cannot say that this anime was that great. That doesn't mean that it is terrible, it just lacks a lot of things that could have been there if there were more episodes.

One thing that made the anime a little worse, is that except for one or two minor weak villains, all the main villains end up becoming good after one or two fights and except for the aforementioned one or two minor weak villains which were killed by stronger villains almost instantly, everyone lived and was happy. Well, one good thing to say about this anime is that at least I got a good laugh out of a certain scene involving Mashiro and panties in episode 5. Ahem, skipping ahead to the ending, the ending was sort of sad yet not enough to make me cry or have to hold any tears in. It did manage to keep my interest and I didn't want to pause it to ruin the "moment" at least.

Anyway, if you are expecting this anime to have impressive fighting scenes, good character development, or a bunch of interesting characters in general, I would suggest not watching it. If you are perhaps bored, like ecchi and harem anime, and like anime as long as the character design is good, then this might be for you on a rainy day.

Just to start the show was pretty good but after the 10th episode i was ready to punch myself in the face to say the least. The characters background was not gone through enough and left to many questions unanswered like why did the makers of this anime have to make characters that have strange pasts yet they dont seem to go into them at all. The sound and animation was ok but the story left to many holes that needed to be patched. If the story was a ship then this ship has so many holes that it doesnt have a hull. Getting kicked in the groin was less painfull then this ending was. Let me just let you know how you should go about watching this anime

1. look it up on youtube

2. punch yourself in the face

3. exit out of youtube

That is how you should watch it.

Based on the starting eposide I was ready for a good story and romance. However within 3 episodes the male protagonist became so annoying and irritating that I stopped watching it. Only my habit of finishing any series once started made me pick it up again and finish the series. I found that all the characters half-baked and the end even more so.

Story:

There was a story here, I understood it completely... I even predicted how it would proceed, develop, and end almost perfectly. This is not how a story should be. I'm not a fan of mysteries by any stretch of the imagination but not many people read or watch a story they already know whats going to happen... it's boring. I took the time to finish this because I was hopping I would be wrong. Sadly, this time I wasn't.

Animation:

Average characters designs, rainbow hair colors, over the top hairstyles, yet nice scenery and city scapes, non-uniform character faces (at least a few of them), and somewhat interesting enemy designs... I rated this higher than it probably deserved... *shrugs*

Sounds:

Was ok, didn't really care for or against them. It didn't break the flow or annoy me, got my standard 7 for that alone. Nuff said.

Characters:

Some annoyed me, most were pretty standard fair, one or two were pleasantly unique. There was some development and growth but I wanted more. In the end it wasn't anything to be praise worthy or belittle... mostly.

Overall:

What can I say, the show had it's issues, quite a few of them. I would have enjoyed it much better if the ending were different, might even have put in a rec or two. As it stands this more than under average show fell even further short once I got to the final 3 eps. At the very end I found myself slightly miffed, to the point that I'd never recommend this to anyone. I might put a few unidirectional anirecs though so that someone having seen this could find better shows along the same lines. And there are better shows than this by far with a very similar story line.