Japan is deeply shaped by Shintō, the older of its two main religious traditions, in which thousands of gods (kami) and spirits are said to inhabit nature, ancestors and special places. It is no surprise, then, that gods, goddesses and divine beings keep showing up in Japanese anime — sometimes as the main character, sometimes as a quiet presence in the background. This list rounds up the best anime where deities are central to the story, and finishes with a broader index of related titles.
We will also point to a list of the most popular gods in anime, and a longer catalogue further down. If a favorite of yours is missing, you can always add it in the comments.
What makes gods anime special?
A kami in Shintō is not the all-powerful figure of the Abrahamic traditions. It is closer to a sacred spirit that can live in a mountain, a river, an ancestor or a household object. This open, flexible sense of divinity gives anime creators a lot of room to play: a harvest goddess in Spice and Wolf has almost nothing in common with the death god in Death Note, and yet both are clearly gods in their own stories.
The series below were chosen because the deities are not just background flavor. They shape the plot, the tone, or the central question of the show. A longer index of related titles sits at the end of the article for further browsing.
Action and Shōnen: gods in the thick of the fight
We start with series where gods hit hard, break deals, or threaten to upend entire fantasy worlds.
Noragami + Noragami Aragoto
Yato is a minor god whose dream is to have a shrine of his own and followers who actually pray to him. For now, he is almost unknown, and his only companion, a spirit partner who used to help him grant people's wishes, has just left to work for another deity.
As he tries to rebuild on his own, Yato is nearly hit by a bus. Iki Hiyori, a high school student, pushes him out of the way and takes the hit herself, which leaves her stuck between the human world and the afterlife. Bound to Yato until her problem is solved, she teams up with him and his new spirit partner. The goal is the same as ever: fame, a shrine, recognition as a real god.
Death Note
A shinigami is a death god who can kill anyone simply by writing the victim's name in a notebook called the Death Note. Ryuk, bored with his routine in the spirit world, drops his notebook into the human realm, where it ends up in the hands of Light Yagami, a brilliant but bored high school student.
With this divine power in his hands, Light decides to rid the world of criminals and reshape it in his image, a world where he would be worshipped almost as a god. The Japanese police soon notice that criminals are dying in strange circumstances, and they bring in L, the eccentric detective widely considered the best in the world. The series is built on the cat-and-mouse game between Light, his notebook and the bored shinigami Ryuk, and L with his task force.
Campione!
Godou Kusanagi, a former high school baseball player, goes to Sardinia at his grandfather's request to return a tablet called Lucrezia Zola. Once there, he runs into Erica Blandelli, a swordswoman who drags him straight into a dispute between two gods.
In the middle of the crisis, Godou ends up facing the ancient Persian warlord Verethragna in a fight he is not supposed to win. After he kills the god, Godou becomes a Campione — one of the titles given to those who have slain a deity and inherited a fragment of their divine power.
Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? (DanMachi)
The story is set in the city of Orario, where adventurers gather to explore a vast underground labyrinth known simply as the Dungeon, chasing fame, treasure and the favor of the gods.
For Bell Cranel, fame and wealth are secondary. What he really wants is to meet girls. He soon finds out, though, that anything can happen in the Dungeon, and on his very first real dive he ends up being the one who needs rescuing. The series leans on the gag as well as on the action, and on the very real divine families running the city from their towering churches.
Comedy and slice of life: gods with a lighter touch
Plenty of anime about gods lean on humor, even the action ones. This section collects series where deities show up in a more everyday register, from harvest goddesses to unlucky college students.
Spice and Wolf — Ōkami to Kōshinryō (狼と香辛料)
A young traveling merchant finds a goddess curled up in his cart. Her name is Holo, she is more than six hundred years old, and apart from her wolf ears and tail she looks like a young woman.
She introduces herself as the harvest goddess of Pasloe, the village she has blessed with abundant wheat harvests for centuries, after making a promise to a villager long ago. The problem is that the villagers have started to rely on their own farming methods, and their faith in Holo has been fading for years. Lonely and no longer needed, she decides to leave with the merchant and head north, back to her old homeland.
KonoSuba — God's Blessing on This Wonderful World! (この素晴らしい世界に祝福を!)
Kazuma Satō is a shut-in teenager whose life is cut short in a pretty undignified way. He wakes up in the afterlife facing Aqua, a well-meaning but rather useless goddess who offers him a fresh start in a parallel world that looks and plays a lot like an MMORPG overrun by a Demon King.
Aqua offers Kazuma one powerful item or one overpowered skill to bring with him. After some bickering, he chooses Aqua herself to be his one advantage, and the two of them, plus a couple of disastrous party members they pick up along the way, end up trying to survive in the small town of Axel. The goddess is technically on his side. She is also, in practice, a walking disaster.
Kamisama Kiss (神様はじめました)
Kamisama Kiss is a shōjo romance with a strong supernatural streak. It starts with Nanami Momozono, a high school girl who has just been kicked out of her home because her gambling-addicted father has fled, leaving the family debts behind.
Wandering the streets with nowhere to go, she runs into a man who, after hearing her story, offers her a place to stay. The place turns out to be an abandoned Shintō shrine, and the man is its deity. When he leaves, he passes the shrine and its divine duties on to Nanami, who suddenly has to learn how to be a local god, with the help of Tomoe, a fox spirit and her new familiar.
Ah! My Goddess — Ah! Megami-sama (ああっ女神さまっ)
Morisato Keiichi has always had terrible luck. His bicycle breaks down on the way to class, his classmates take advantage of him, and the few girls who actually talk to him are usually a sign that something is about to go wrong. So when he dials what he thinks is a student helpline and reaches the goddess Belldandy instead, it is genuinely the best thing that has happened to him in years.
Belldandy explains that she appears when someone's bad luck has become so extreme that it throws the cosmic balance off, and she is allowed to grant one wish. Keiichi, half joking, wishes for Belldandy to stay by his side forever. The wish is granted on the spot, and the rest of the series follows the life they try to build together as a goddess and a thoroughly ordinary college student. The franchise has been running in one form or another since the 1993 OVA, with the TV adaptation arriving in 2005.
The most loved gods and goddesses in anime
Below is a ranking of well-loved gods and divine characters in anime, drawn from popular opinion. For each entry we give the character name first, followed by the series they appear in. We do not go into detail or add pictures here, the goal is just a quick reference.
- Yato — Noragami
- Holo — Spice and Wolf
- Kofuku Ebisu — Noragami
- Hestia — Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon?
- Bishamonten — Noragami
- Nanami Momozono — Kamisama Kiss
- Rory Mercury — GATE
- Aqua — KonoSuba
- Sadaharu — Gintama
- Tet — No Game No Life
- Deus Ex Machina — Future Diary (Mirai Nikki)
- Belldandy — Ah! My Goddess
- King Kai — Dragon Ball
- Moro — Princess Mononoke
- Korin — Dragon Ball
- Celestial Spirit King — Fairy Tail
- Urd — Ah! My Goddess
- Momiji — Good Luck Girl! (Binbō-gami ga!)
- Truth (The Truth) — Fullmetal Alchemist: Brotherhood
- Alastor — Shakugan no Shana
- Satan — Blue Exorcist
- Athena — Campione!
- Neptune — Hyperdimension Neptunia
List of anime with gods and deities
To close the article, here is a broader list of anime that revolve around gods and deities. It may include second seasons and OVAs, and the order is roughly by popularity, not a strict ranking. For background on the religious side of the topic, see our piece on God in Japanese.
| Anime name | Release |
|---|---|
| Noragami Aragoto | 2015 |
| Spice and Wolf II | 2009 |
| KonoSuba — God's Blessing on This Wonderful World! 2 | 2017 |
| Spice and Wolf | 2008 |
| Kamisama Kiss | 2012 |
| Noragami | 2014 |
| KonoSuba — God's Blessing on This Wonderful World! 2 OVA | 2017 |
| Saint Seiya: The Lost Canvas — Meiō Shinwa 2nd Chapter | 2011 |
| KonoSuba — God's Blessing on This Wonderful World! | 2016 |
| Noragami Aragoto OVA | 2015 |
| Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? | 2015 |
| Spice and Wolf II OVA | 2009 |
| Noragami OVA | 2014 |
| KonoSuba — God's Blessing on This Wonderful World! OVA | 2016 |
| Good Luck Girl! (Binbō-gami ga!) | 2012 |
| Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? Movie: Arrow of the Orion | 2019 |
| Dragon Ball Super | 2015 |
| Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious | 2019 |
| Dragon Ball Z Movie 14: Battle of Gods | 2013 |
| Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy | 2006 |
| Ah! My Goddess: Fighting Wings | 2007 |
| Ah! My Goddess: The Movie | 2000 |
| Ah! My Goddess TV | 2005 |
| Ah! My Goddess: Flights of Fancy Specials | 2007 |
| Inari, Konkon, Koi Iroha | 2014 |
| Ah! My Goddess | 1993 |
| Campione! | 2012 |
| Kamichu! | 2005 |
| Kamigami no Asobi | 2014 |
| Mythical Detective Loki Ragnarok | 2003 |
| Kamisama Kazoku | 2006 |
| Kamichama Karin | 2007 |
| Spice and Wolf VR | 2019 |
| Is It Wrong to Try to Pick Up Girls in a Dungeon? II: Past & Future | 2019 |
| 30-sai no Hoken Taiiku | 2011 |
| Ah! My Goddess: The Adventures of Mini-Goddess | 1998 |
| Nekogami Yaoyorozu | 2011 |
| Arion | 1986 |
| Cautious Hero: The Hero Is Overpowered but Overly Cautious Recap | 2019 |
| Bride of Deimos | 1988 |
| Namu Amida Butsu!: Rendai Utena | 2019 |
| HoneyWorks: Ima Chotto Dake Wadai no Kamisama | 2013 |
| Mikanbune | 1927 |
| Mighty Thor: Battle Royale | 2017 |
| Han Hua Ri Ji | 2019 |
If you have made it this far, you have probably already picked a few favorites. Which god or goddess would you most want to see adapted into a brand new series, and which classic from the table above do you think more people should give a chance?
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