Kamisama Kiss

What it is

Nanami Momozono, put out of her flat by her father’s gambling debts, helps a stranger in a park and is given his home in return. The home is a derelict shrine, and the gift is his job: she is now its land god. The shrine comes with a fox familiar, Tomoe, who refuses to serve a human girl until a kiss binds him to her. From there the series runs for twenty-five volumes as a romance whose supporting cast is the gods and spirits of Japan: a crow-tengu who works as a pop idol, a white snake from a drowned shrine, the dragon king of the sea, the gathering of the gods at Izumo, the underworld of Izanami. Suzuki Julietta drew it for Hana to Yume between 2008 and 2016, and it was animated twice.

Yokai that appear

• Kitsune 狐 — Tomoe, the male lead: a wild fox of five centuries ago, now the shrine's familiar and the girl's reluctant protector.
• Tengu 天狗 — Kurama, a crow-tengu from Mount Kurama who lives as a pop idol; the Mount Kurama arc in volumes 9 and 10 brings in Sōjōbō and a village of tengu.
• Oni 鬼 — Akura-ō, the immortal oni who once rampaged beside Tomoe and who returns in the body of a human boy.
• Bake-danuki 化け狸 — Mizutama, a tanuki courtesan of the spirits' pleasure quarter, in the story of Tomoe's past.

How far from the record

Tomoe is a yako, a wild fox, who ran with the oni Akura-ō five hundred years ago before a shrine’s god tamed him into a messenger. The record keeps those two foxes apart: the messenger fox that guards an Inari shrine and the wild fox that possesses and deceives are different animals in most tellings, and neither falls in love. Kurama is a crow-tengu from Mount Kurama, the mountain where Sōjōbō trained the young Yoshitsune; the manga keeps the mountain and the old chief’s name and adds a village of male tengu, a succession quarrel and a career in visual-kei. Akura-ō is an immortal oni whose nature changes after years spent in a human body, which no oni of the tales ever does. Suzuki has said that she worked from everyday Shinto custom and light research, and that kami who are “more emotional or human” are easier to draw. That is the measure of the work: the names, the mountains and the ranks are real, and the feelings are hers.

Where to read it

English

Kamisama Kiss (external link) — VIZ Media (Shojo Beat), 25 volumes, complete

Spanish

Kamisama Kiss (external link) — Panini Comics España, double volumes from 2025, ongoing. An earlier single-volume edition was published in Mexico

Indonesian

Kamisama Hajimemashita (external link) — Elex Media Komputindo, published in the 2010s; volume count unconfirmed