Campione! (Season One) – Campione! Matsurowanu Kamigami to Kamigoroshi no Maou

Godou Kusanagi’s grandfather travelled the world as a teenager and as such, he has acquired a lot of random stuff. One of those things is a stone tablet that he has asked Godou to return to the lady he met in Sardinia.

Campione! (Season One) – Campione! Matsurowanu Kamigami to Kamigoroshi no Maou

What did you watch?

I just did something I wasn’t expecting, but it was absolutely the right call. Originally, I had begun watching Campione! and was writing episode reviews. It started out fine, but then I lost interest. By that point, I had written and scheduled eight posts which was about five thousand words in total. I finished watching the season but couldn’t find it in me to write up reviews for those five remaining episodes. So, I’ve changed a few things with my schedule and will now be doing just a season review, which is what you are reading right now. Anyhow, let’s dive in.

What happened?

Godou doesn’t speak any Italian, but figures he can just get by. However, upon his efforts to find the train station, he is stopped by a beautiful blonde girl who pulls a knife on him and demands that he hand over the grimoire. Of course, he doesn’t understand any of it as she’s talking Italian. As soon as she realises, she switches to Japanese and continues to demand the Grimoire. Their conversation is cut short when something happens to the world around them. Everyone has vanished and there’s a giant boar attacking the city. What the hell is going on?

The beautiful blonde, Erica Blandelli claims to be a witch who fights the gods that are the cause of the natural disasters the rest of the world sees. When she runs off to fight it, Godou finds himself running after her. He trips and drops the stone tablet. Once on his feet, he finds a boy holding the tablet. He speaks in an old dialect and then gives back the tablet to Godou, who briefly sees a bright white horse. He runs after Erica and catches her as she falls from a rooftop. When they look back at the god, it has gone, leaving a trail of destruction.

The media describes the event as a freak storm, most likely from a nearby weather system. Godou explains again how he has to deliver the tablet to a lady called Lucretia Zola. Erica freezes and then agrees to help him find her. She is also known as the Witch of Sardinia. After a harrowing car ride, Godou meets Lucretia who is far younger-looking than he had imagined. She’s also only wearing lacey underwear so it’s hard to be certain… She tells him that the tablet he has is a spell called Prometheus and then she leaves it in his trust. The next morning, they are awoken by two gods battling. If they can’t stop them the whole of Sardinia could be destroyed.

What did you think?

I’ll admit, the first episode caught my attention. We had Godou using a tablet that had the spell called Prometheus. If you know anything about Greek mythology then you’ll know that Prometheus created humans and gave them fire which he stole from the gods against Zeus’ wishes. So, when Godou used that spell to steal a golden sword from the god Verethragna I was intrigued. He then defeated Verethragna and became a Campione or God Slayer. I have a casual interest in Greek mythology so this was quite interesting. I also liked Erica and found the way she passed the knowledge Godou needed to defeat the gods by kissing him to be fairly well explained. Then, as the series went on, we added more and more girls, which was fine. Basically, that’s how I would describe this series – fine. That’s not enough for me to want to write up thirteen posts.

What was your favourite moment?

I think it has to be the first episode. The way the gods were introduced was interesting and I enjoyed the way Erica went from trying to mug Godou for the grimoire before she ended up drunkenly arguing with a mask she thought was Godou while he sat at a different table. Then, there was Erica’s maid who was insane and finally, the Witch of Sardinia, Lucretia Zola who spent the entire episode in lacey underwear. There was a lot to like about that episode, but I don’t think it was a fair representation of the series as a whole.

What was your least favourite moment?

There was an arc that encompassed episodes eight to ten in which Godou fought Perseus who was actually Mithras, and/or both. I was fine with the gods having various personas because there’s a lot of history where that happens. Take the Roman and Greek gods for example where there are a lot of crossovers – Poseidon and Neptune, Ares and Mars, etc, etc. My main issue with this arc was that Liliana Kranjcar became the new girl to join Godou, however, she spent three episodes basically refusing to kiss him and transfer the knowledge he needed to defeat Perseus. It got really old and really annoying, especially since Godou was going to fight Perseus without her help and likely get himself killed.

Who was your favourite character?

Erica Blandelli was my favourite character. She had a lot of great moments, although most of those happened very early in the series. There were some towards the end, but nothing like the opening couple of episodes. I do have one criticism of Erica’s character design. It would appear that whoever created Erica was confused about how Italians look. Now, I know we’re talking stereotypes here, but the most common hair colour in Italy is brown and then black. I guess she wouldn’t stand out as much compared to the Japanese characters, but she could have had dark hair and olive skin and still been beautiful. If anything, she looks more Scandinavian. Anyhow, that’s not much of a criticism.

Who was your least favourite character?

I’m not a huge fan of all the dithering characters who could step up when the world was in danger until they had absolutely no choice. I’m talking about Yuri Mariya and Liliana Kranjcar. However, there was another character who I found even more frustrating. That was Ena Seishuuin. She was added in the eleventh episode and I still can’t quite work out why. I think it stems from another criticism of the series and that is it was too rushed. There seemed to be lots of missing parts that made the whole quite confusing. We missed lots of little details that the books likely have and that hurt the flow. All the scenes with Salvatore Doni made little to no sense because we were missing so much context.

Would you like some more?

As this season is, I don’t want to see any more. I don’t think a second season could unpick the tangled web that was the first season. The story was interesting to begin with but then lacked any sort of direction as they tried to squeeze in four girls plus Athena and Lucretia. Had they taken a little more time to develop things and tell the story it would probably have been far more entertaining. I think Erica and Yuri would been enough for the first season. A longer season might also have worked better.

What have you learned?

There are times when the story needs to move at a quick pace and times when you need to slow things down. This story seemed to get them a little mixed up. There was no way the fight with Perseus should have taken three episodes when the first episode was over in a flash. Not to mention the number of times stuff happened off-screen that would have been great to see. We didn’t see Godou fighting with Salvatore Doni. The fight with Verenthragna was cut incredibly short. Working out what should be shown and what you can gloss over is a key part of storytelling. Getting it wrong can frustrate the audience. Don’t tell us the story is about a person who becomes a god killer and then not show the full fight where he killed a god. That’s just crazy!

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