English Dub Season Review KamiKatsu: Working for God in a Godless World Season One

Based on the Japanese Manga series written by Aoi Akashiro and illustrated by Sonshō Hangetsuban. The story follows the heir to a cult leader named Yukito Urabe (Voiced by Austin Tindle of Shenmue and Tokyo Ghoul fame) whose life is centered around the mysterious goddess Mitama. But everything changes after he’s killed during a ritual gone wrong. To his surprise, Yukito is reborn into a world with no concept of gods or religion of any kind! And in this world, life and death are decided by the Imperial State. As Yukito fights to protect his new village, someone from his past life lends a helping hand…

 The season was produced by Studio Palette (of “The World’s Finest Assassin Gets Reincarnated in Another World as an Aristocrat” fame) and directed by Yuki Inaba, with Yoshifumi Sueda serving as supervisor, Aoi Akashiro handling the script, Kaori Yoshikawa designing the characters, and Yasunori Iwasaki composing the music. The opening theme song is “I Wish” by Rin Kurusu, while the ending theme song is “Steppin’ Up Life!” by Akari Kitō.

In a nutshell, the anime’s plot is both thought-provoking and at times cringey in its humor, as it explores themes of faith, spirituality, and the human condition in a world devoid of these concepts. It involves yet another main protagonist in an Isekai-like scenario with his life changed through tragedy, but also this anime has some slight cult elements. However, it seems this anime also tries to find a balance between mostly lighthearted with raunchy comedic moments that sometimes overshadow the proceedings which often involve jokes about sex, debauchery, and even gender confusion (More on that later).

The main character, Yukito Urabe, is a complex individual whose journey to find meaning and purpose in a godless world is both heart-wrenching and inspiring, even if he uses underhanded tactics to achieve his goals. Being reincarnated into a world where kingdoms and gods are well established regardless of good and evil is painfully predictable and often stereotypical. However, in a world where a person reincarnates to see the same thing but minus gods or religion, that is a frightening aspect. And for better or worse, that is the life that has now been thrust upon Yukito. He is the son of a cult founder who worships their god, known as “Mitama”, and is chosen to be his father’s organization’s next guru to participate in a death-defying ritual. But in an unfortunate blunder, Yukito sadly loses his life through simple drowning, with the wish that he wants to be reborn in a godless world.

Much to his shock, this sort of happens. However, it’s not the peaceful utopia that most pretentious, smug, atheist, jerks, or intellectual bullies are led to believe. You could make the argument that there would be no wars or senseless killings if religion never existed. But many people tend to overlook the logistics of how screwed up humanity can still be with or without it. As this universe establishes the existence of isolation camps for outcasts/deviants who believe performing sacrificial rituals on human life for your Imperial government is bullshit. It’s like all the worst aspects of religions and cults but without the belief in a God part. And whether society wants to admit it or not, even in a world without religion, humanity as a whole is perfectly capable of fucking itself up just fine.

The supporting cast are varying degrees of wacky, fun, and outright unhinged in terms of how they’re written with small fragments of tragedy and depth underneath the surface. As it goes out of its way to make most (if not all) of its characters sympathetic good people who are all flawed in different ways as the result of the society they live in, which resulted in some being either uneducated, sexually repressed or are debaucherous jackassess as a result. And the God that’s summoned in Episode 2 “Mitama” (Voiced by Sarah Wiedenheft) takes the form of an obnoxious, mischievous loli-girl stereotype who’s obsessed with protecting Yukito and demands him to be her “follower” which given how indifferent and psychologically damaged Yukito is from being raised by a cult leader who constantly interfered with any social life he could’ve had, and not wanting anything to do with his lifestyle, is a challenge in of itself.

However, like most gods and religions, Mitama’s powers come from how many followers she has, which is where Yukito’s manipulative tactics come in to try to increase their numbers. And if a certain amount of followers are reached, Mitama is capable of protecting people and also resurrecting the dead which sometimes has unusual and unexpected results, such as accidentally changing the gender of an Imperial knight named Bertrand which is often played for laughs due to the constant sex jokes, humiliations, and indignities that he/she’s regularly subjected to, despite Bertrand’s attempts to comprehend how mentally fucked up his/her situation is, and trying to regain a new sense of purpose after being resurrected…

It isn’t until the 4 and 5th episodes when the story begins changing the dynamic with a series of big reveals that expand on its lore & world building with a lot more depth, and becomes a major game-changer with the introduction of these genetically engineered creatures called Archons with an androgynous Archon working behind the scenes named “Loki” (appropriately voiced by Meli Grant) who has an extreme lust for that that God status and somewhat leads the charge as the central antagonist while highlighting the flawed downsides of science as an imbalanced (and a potentially corrupt & immoral) dominant force with later episodes introducing other Archons who also have colorful personalities along with unique powers and abilities that if given better direction, can become very instrumental to the plots proceedings.

The animation of this anime is a mixed bag at best. Sometimes it’s pretty good, But I can even safely say that it’s above average and attempts to be as wacky and unhinged as the world these characters inhabit. At random it’ll mix different art styles together that feel out of place such as rotoscoping footage of a guy driving a CGI tractor live-action-made-anime scene with an Anime character’s head inserted, outdated CGI designs for in-universe animals and otherworldly monsters that stick out like sore thumbs interacting with 2d Anime characters and often feel like outdated early 2000’s Anime along the lines of “Blue Submarine No.6” and looks intentionally worse than the Kaiju-sized “Spirit Tortoise” from Shield Hero Season 2. And all this is in combination with random parts of the story that switch to what I can only describe as “16 Bit Super Nintendo graphics” whenever certain camera angles are utilized or when the characters encounter random monsters onscreen like a turn-based JRPG that may require subtitles since most of the scenes with Japanese text isn’t translated in the dub whatsoever.

Overall, I honestly didn’t know what to expect going into this blind, but despite this being an adaptation of a Manga that I’ve never even heard of until doing this Anime series, the show itself feels like one glorious internet shitpost. As an Isekai, it manages to set itself apart by mixing its wacky & weird ideas while highlighting the negative aspects of how cults and certain religions can easily manipulate the masses and how suppression of information and sexual repression can negatively affect society as a whole. While also excelling with its questionable characters, unique & thought-provoking lore, world-building, and peak artistic direction. It’s open-ended enough for another Season. But if Season 2 does become a reality, I look forward to seeing what weird-ass direction it could potentially take next!