A review by readingrobyn
Kamichama Karin, Vol. 01 by Koge-Donbo*, Lianne Sentar

4.0

This review applies to all 7 books of the Kamichama Karin Series and contains no spoilers.

A little back story for my own personal remembrance, when I first picked up this series it was at the urging of a friend who owned a copy and was letting me borrow it. I had just started to read manga through borrowing other books from her collection and was at that time still getting use to reading in the opposite direction. This was about three years ago and I ended up specifically loving this series so much that I would delve even deeper to the Japanese fandom. Soon finding myself obsessed with the country and this medium, that has still persisted to this day.

Now, Kamichama is one of my absolute favourites thus far. This was the perfect introduction to reading manga and all the crazy worlds that come with it.

I love the art, the styles are so mixed, going from incredibly detailed panels, to the classics of manga emotion, to adorable chibi-like drawings. The characters were always funny or at the very least adorable, and were layered enough to make you invest in their individual stories. The plot however, is a little bit harder for me to describe with proper praise. Although sometimes the story-lines got a bit too chaotic, Kamichama also has its strong moments. The biggest being the pure originality of each storyline littered with constant questions, great character twists, and the strangest relationship dynamics. These elements made up for any problems I had with keeping track of everyone's motives.

I think that the strongest aspect of this series is that it acknowledges and understands its own weirdness (boarder line stupid-fun) and embraces it all for one fun and oddly interesting manga.