Yota Narukami is an Ordinary High-School Student aimlessly adrift on his final summer vacation before graduation. He wiles away the time playing video games, reminiscing about basketball with his best friend Ashura Kokuhou, and trying to fit in studying time to get into the same university as his crush, Kyouko Izanami. In other words, a perfectly ordinary summer. However, these idyllic days are turned upside down by a fateful encounter with a young girl in nun's clothes, who claims to be the god Odin.
Whether or not "Odin", real name Hina Sato, is actually a god is debatable given her childishness, yet she possesses supernatural powers of prediction with she has deigned to put to Yota's use. And Yota had better make this last summer count because Hina has declared that the world itself shall end in 30 days.
The Day I Became a God (Kamisama ni Natta Hi) is the third original anime written by Jun Maeda and Key/Visual Arts, which aired from October 11 to December 27, 2020. It was produced by P. A. Works and licensed by Funimation, via their partnership with Aniplex.
This series contains examples of:
- Aborted Declaration of Love: Yota continually tries to gather up the courage to confess to Izanami, but he always chickens out in the end. At the end of Episode 5, he gets the best chance of all, when it seems like Izanami may finally reciprocate his feelings, but he decides against confessing since he feels like he would be taking advantage of her gratitude for the episode's events.
- Amateur Film-Making Plot: Yota's little sister Sora is making a movie for her summer homework, and the filming is a subplot throughout the story. The final scene is Yota watching the completed movie with Hina and comparing the movie's plot and the summer they spent together.
- Anguished Declaration of Love: In Episode 9 between Yota and Hina right before Hina is taken away by government agents.
- Awesome Mc Cool Name: Most of the cast are named after Japanese gods. For example, Yota Narukami and his family ("Narukami" meaning "becoming a god", along with having the phonetic for "thundering god"), as well as Izanami (named after the Shinto goddess of death and creation). By contrast, Hina Sato is an extremely ordinary name, which Hina gets jealous about whenever a new character is introduced.
- Bittersweet Ending: Hina is still suffering the debilitating effects of Logos Syndrome and will require care for a long time, but she is making progress and Yota vows to become a medical researcher to find a way to cure her.
- Calvinball: The version of Mahjong that Hina imparts upon Yota in Episode 4 is a nonsensical flouting of the rules which only continues to escalate in absurdity. However, the judges deem it Crazy Enough to Work and Yota wins the tournament.
- The Cameo: Joujirou Takajou from Charlotte appears in Episode 6 among the people attending the summer festival. He's even wearing a Yusarin T-shirt.
- Career-Ending Injury: Ashura was struck by a car shortly after he and Yota failed to advance in the championships last year, and while he recovered, his hopes of playing basketball professionally were over.
- Cerebus Syndrome: The series goes from largely episodic dramedy in the first seven episodes until Episode 8, where Yota finds Hina's father and learns about Hina's Logos Syndrome and then Episode 9, aptly titled "The Day of the Deicide", in which Hina is abducted by government agents to remove the quantum computer chip in her brain. After that point, the series becomes much darker as Yota tries to deal with the fallout, and it ends with a Bittersweet Ending.
- Chekhov's Gun: The video game that Yota is shown playing in the first few episodes is what helps him bond with Hina again once she's been institutionalized.
- Childhood Friend Romance: Deconstructed. Though Yota wants to have one with Izanami, it becomes clear that he barely knows anything about her despite being childhood friends, as he doesn't know the simple things like what sport she likes, and it's implied that his crush was more of a lingering attachment from childhood than actual love. By the time Izanami starts to warm up to him, Yota has already started to fall in love with Hina.
- Delicate and Sickly: While Hina comes across as a normal girl, she was actually born with Logos Syndrome, a developmental disorder which causes both brain and motor functions to degrade over time. As a result, her grandfather implanted a chip in her brain to ensure she overcame this. Once said chip has been removed, the "real" Hina can barely speak, requires a wheelchair to move around and requires assistance to use the bathroom.
- Doing In the Wizard: Hina's omniscience is explained by a quantum supercomputer installed in her brain to help compensate for the deficits caused by a neurodegenerative disease.
- Fake Kill Scare: Meta example aimed at the viewers. In the final episode, after everyone watches the movie Sora made, one frame shows Hina, who is suffering from a serious terminal illness, leaning against Yota, unmoving. It's quickly revealed that she just fell asleep.
- Heel–Face Turn:
- The loan shark who harasses Hikari's ramen shop turns over a new leaf after Yota defeats him, showing up in Episode 7 as a part of the film crew.
- After helping the government locate Hina, Suzuki helps Yota find her again as a way of repenting for his "deicide."
- Jerkass Has a Point: Despite Shiba's possessiveness towards Hina and her hostility towards Yota, she has a point in distrusting him, since his lack of indoor voice scares Hina.
- Karma Houdini: The CEO and the government agents who abduct Hina and remove her chip never receive any comeuppance.
- Matchmaker Crush: Hina spends a good half of the series trying to get Yota and Izanami together, only to realize that she's starting to get jealous of Izanami growing more affectionate toward Yota. It's implied more and more that Hina has fallen in love with Yota, with it being confirmed in Episode 9.
- Missing Mom: Izanami's mother died when she was younger. This caused serious repercussions on the girl's personality.
- Nice Girl: Izanami may have an impression of a shy and beautiful teenage girl to everyone, but she's also a kind-hearted girl on the inside who really loves Yota for his compassionate nature. Knowing that Yota has also fallen in love with Hina, she decided to let go of him gracefully.
- Offscreen Moment of Awesome: What Yota's friends did when they fended off the government agents in Episode 9 is never shown or brought up.
- Parental Abandonment: Hina's parents are nowhere to be found, and she was raised by her grandfather before he passed away. In Episode 8, Yota tracks her father down and learns why he abandoned her: because he couldn't bear the trauma of watching his daughter deteriorate with nothing he could do about it, and so rather than love her for what she is and still care for her like a parent should, he chose to be selfish and wrote her off from his life so he could live normally for himself. Her mother, meanwhile, had been unable to bear the guilt of passing the genetic condition to her daughter and took her own life.
- Reasonable Authority Figure: Shiba can be a bit of a Jerkass towards Yota at times and there are moments where it's clear she doesn't want him near Hina. But even with all that, she does give Yota a lot of chances to interact with Hina and try to bring back her memories his way. And even towards the end when she's having him removed from the premises, she does finally relent and allow Hina to go with him when it's clear Hina has made her choice.
- Shout-Out: One of the ways Hina tries to get Izanami to open up to Yota is for him to reenact brief parodies of American action movies. These include:
- Armageddon (1998), in which they comment on how it is a bad movie and doesn't make logical sense.
- Rocky, in which one character reenacts the scene where Rocky calls out for Adrian, but substituting "Izanami" in place of "Adrian".
- The World Is Not Ready: This is the rationale given by various world leaders to justify removing the quantum computer chip from Hina's brain.
