Oooh, a first episodic post.

Summary: We see a scene from Jin’s (protagonist) past that involved Nagi.^[1] Jin carves a statue out of a tree that was chopped down at a shrine. It absorbs earth and out pops Nagi like an exploding matryoshka doll. Jin learns about her. Nagi tells Jin that trees are sacred and that “as its name goes, [are trees] of God.” Nagi declares herself to be a deity of the land - “a mother of this land.” Jin’s simplistic bewilderment is a source of humor. There’s some confusion on Nagi’s part as to “the vessel in which she materialized” - her human form. Nagi is furious to know that she came out of a sacred tree. Impurities of the land are black-ish, spirit-like things.^[2] Evidently, Jin has special powers because he’s able to handle these things. The rest of the episode focuses on the antics of a single bachelor living by himself when he interacts for the first time with a hot girl…albeit godly tree-spirit manifestation. Jin buys panties^[3]. Nagi takes a shower. Jin stares at her soiled panties. Jin hides his porn stash. They eat, they sleep. Jin notes how gods take pisses too.

Cynicism: Twenty minutes of this show was pleasing. Entertaining, to say the least, though as most first episodes are, elusive, retaining from us the larger scope of things - marketing ploy, to draw in viewers. So it’s hard not to succumb to typical harem-to-be’s and single high school students (or less?) suddenly under the immense presence of women…alone. What’s worse is that she’s an even more typical “ignorant girl” - the erotic premise of Chobits. In both anime the female lead don’t even really understand what they are. Nagi isn’t originally a human, Chi is a robot. Two of the three previous footnotes summarized my skepticism of this first episode, and I’ve briefly talked about my concerns on one. In regards to the other, the childhood memory scheme, Nagi, as a God, exists omnitemporally, so it will be her role to fill in that gap of Jin’s waning childhood memory. As with most romance-comedies that utilize this framework, the cathartic climax will present itself with Jin realizes “it was her all along” - or something along those lines.

Thoughts: The most interesting part of this was the OP^[4]. The song was ok…but the visuals were noteworthy. In it we see Nagi as an actress. She receives the romantic tragedy of film directors and hollow directives of consumerist business folk. The point is that we don’t know if the fourth wall they’re presenting is literal or figurative. Is Nagi, the character presented here, actually an actress within the anime microcosm? - or is the surrounding environment supposed to be a representation of reality? Rather, it’s macrocosmic. In this case, the setting of the anime is the core of observation and the anime macrocosm the periphery.

Of course we’ll soon figure out whether the OP is figurative or literal - I’d generally say figurative, but you never know. It’d be a really interesting - much more so than it’s presented itself to be as of now - to see “anime-tized”^[5] actors. It’d be “meta-ish” along the lines of Genshiken or Welcome to the NHK!

Yet there’s one other picture that would make a cases for the OP as literal. Up in the screenshots there’s one of Jin holding up his plastic pet cage against the glare of the sun. The other is the bird’s eye view of the city through clouds, very Haibane Renmei-esque. To the former, it’s aesthetics alone would connote the brilliance of the sun? - for dramatic purposes only? What happens is that Jin catches a spider in his cage and jiggles it around for a bit when Nagi, clad in fetished temple girl attire, puts her hand on his shoulder.

What’s the similarity between the spider and Jin? Hierarchically speaking, nothing really. The spider can be representative of humans in a certain state of ignorance. We are free to roam as we please, but is freedom such a reality? - are we not subject to be placed within the container of an immature insect collector of sorts? To that extent, Spider : Jin :: Jin : Nagi. The difference is that there is no visible plastic lining around Jin. Visible remains the key word, however. How far will Kannagi take these metaphors - be they misinterpretations or otherwise? I can’t say with any amount of certainty.

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[1] Set up for a typical “it really was you” anime trope?
[2] Very reminiscent of Dennou-coil.
[3] Remember that episode of Chobits?
[4] The music around 1:06 was terribly cliché. The pandering of arpeggiated, harmonically ambiguous and ambivalent chords in rubato is so played out it’s not even funny any more.
[5] The word probably differs from “animated”.