“Somali to Mori no Kamisama” (“Somali and the Forest God”) is the first new anime series of the Winter 2020 anime season that I’ve watched. And like so many other Season’s First Anime over the decades, it wasn’t a keeper for me.
In some fantasy/sci-fi world a golem who watches over a forest finds a small human girl who is in chains. The girl looks at the golem, who is not very human looking at all, and calls him “Dad”. So the forest golem leaves his watch over the forest and proceeds to travel with the little girl in an attempt to find other humans. This is a dangerous quest because the world is filled with fantasy/sci-fi sentient creatures who, having won a genocidal war against humans, still like to eat any humans that they find. So the golem passes off the little human girl as a minotaur girl while they travel.
The golem is “Mr. Spock”-style emotionless while the little girl is a wide-eyed innocent who has no sense of danger. The backgrounds are colourful. The creatures are a take on Star Wars bar creatures, but more Disney friendly when they aren’t talking about eating humans. The creators of this show might wish that they were doing something Ghibli-esque in the manner of “Spirited Away”, but instead they simply achieve boredom.
Essentially, the writers have given me no reason to be interested in the main characters or in the situation and the Hallmark Christmas Movie background music score does nothing for me either. There is an overall lack of originality in the first episode that provides no indication that things will get any different. Lots of people will probably Love-to-Death this series, but I won’t be there watching it along with them.
My final rating is C+, mainly for the backgrounds.
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