English Dub Season Review: The Day I Became a God Season One

If you recognize the name Jun Maeda, he’s a name amongst the anime world who has produced instant anime classics that have a track record of tugging at the heartstrings and for the most part is considered to be the “Nicholas Sparks of Anime” with classics such as Kanon, Air, Clannad, and few others. Amongst them all, the prolific ones are the 5-year-gap collaborations with himself, Na-Ga, Aniplex, and P.A. Works, with the massively popular Angel Beats! in 2010, and the somewhat controversial “Charlotte” in 2015. Now, in 2020, after suffering from Dilated Cardiomyopathy (DCM) and recovering from a heart transplant in 2016, Maeda returns with his 3rd collaboration project: amalgamating the mundane with the dramatic & fantastical but this time adding the “godlike” element to present us this titular show: “The Day I Became a God” Directed by Charlotte director Yoshiyuki Asai.

We start off with the story, of this young female teen dressed in a weird nun-looking outfit (who calls herself “Odin” but her name is later revealed to be “Hina”) telling a normal high school kid named Youta “You only have 30 days before the world ends!” with a series of predictions shes made that just leaves Youta (and by extension the audience) dumbfounded and confused. But it also has its funny side, with how these situations plan out, and how the characters interact with one another and made even weirder that under some oddly-specific instructions is asked to stay with Youta’s family with several weird revelations that later follow…

And within a few subplots that almost lead nowhere (including one about a hacker kid that knows what Hina truly is), Hina’s predictions and claims can’t simply be pure coincidence. But the interesting side to it is that within the first few episodes, we honestly don’t know if she is telling the truth, or if she knows more than she’s telling people. Which adds more depth, when specific predictions become reality. The major problem is that this self-proclaimed “god” has a bit of a childlike ego at times to where If things don’t go her way, she reacts like a little kid, and it’s funny with how over the top it is. Heck, the whole setup in episode 3 was serious at first but was hit with a bit of a wacky tonal shift with its execution (with a few episodes also doing the same).

And up until the 8th episode, the story is episodic with silly and fun antics built around how the two main characters responding to random situations leaving to wonder if there’s an actual point to them or if it’ll lead anywhere as the episodic nature attempts to sprinkle a deeper narrative throughout allowing for the build-up of a “sad” ending. Youta as a character does have some legit character development but not much and the side characters who are supposed to matter end up being one-off for each of the episode’s random antics and don’t get developed beyond a certain point. But despite the formulaic model of Jun Maeda’s storytelling, The show’s saving grace at the very least was both in the art/animation and music that’s masterfully composed by Nagi Yanagi, Artistically it can be bright and colorful, and other times it can fit night time super well with the music and the songs from the opening, ending to insert songs feel delicately made and with a bit of a wholesome slice-of-life feel.

As a whole, this show is a fucking mess. It’s not completely terrible, but it wasn’t great either. Everything fell apart after the proceedings of episode 8 in an effort to forcibly make the audience give a shit about Hina as a character which would’ve been fine and could’ve excelled in smart writing if they didn’t rush or ignore specific plot/character details that were previously established and were supposed to matter on a narrative level. And as I previously stated in the show’s finale, “You know it’s bad when 50 First Dates found a delicate and creative way to acknowledge the problem while still maintaining a happy ending of sorts”…