Noragami is possibly an anime liked by many, considering how all the top reviews on the MAL page gave it a 10/10. But the same sentiment is not reflected in the rank. Nevertheless, Noragami is quite a unique piece in my eyes. Noragami starts with a god named Yato who wants money to build his own shrine. He starts looking around the city and doing small errands for 5 yen each. Yato has a greatly fleshed character, and his every demand, whim depicts really what his personality is made of. I observed the way he asks for nothing more than 5 yen for any sort of job, no matter how difficult it is. It reveals how much this anime has got to offer. Noragami particularly excelled in storytelling than in execution, because the anime was quite boring in terms of animation at times when fights were pulled back from what they could have been if executed with great vigour. Even the dialogues were great! I reckon that the mangaka could write great romance manga.

Possibly what the whole audience was waiting for was the romance to finally set in. The anime provided the perfect pacing for a good and longing romance which is something that didn’t fully get materialized in the end. The love polygon was between the three main characters, although it is not made very apparent viewers will definitely want something happening between the characters. Noragami for some reason, by coincidence or not had a good mix of characters, and it managed to give them flesh in the limited time that it ran for. Not only was there some superb character development, the sheer number of characters were also nor too little nor too much.

In terms of animation quality and sound, Noragami did excellently. The animation was great, little CGI here and there but the only thing that’s worth pointing out is the lack of great animation during fights. Especially after watching Nanatsu no Taizai, pretty much any fight scene seems dull. But Noragami should have complimented the splendid story and the well fleshed characters with some vigorous animation. The OP was brilliant, and the ED was quite a good song.

I will say that even the great plot failed to save the anime at times. Firstly, there was little aim in the plot. Going around killing phantoms which will keep appearing because people keep dying (phantoms are basically people). The story started out trivially as well, if you remember how Yato first encountered Hiyori. The plot doesn’t have many special features on its own, but it certainly starts out with great riveting concepts such as gods roaming around cities doing errands for money and collecting shinki. There was the abrupt manner in which the villian suddenly broke into the storyline, which seemed nothing more than an annoyance to me. It was like eating oranges with tea. I absolutely can’t even think of such a combination! The final arc didn’t contribute anything to the story, however. It was no more than how team rocket got blasted off during my Pokemon days.

I think Noragami is a show with great ideas, but its greatest source of strength, its plot, led to its demise. I liked Hiyori and Yato a lot, and I would ship till to the end of this world! Several side characters were also brilliant, and they truly and honestly made up for the faults or shortcomings of the few interspersed premature plot designs. I didn’t miss the OP even once in those 12 episodes and 2 OVAs.