Quiet God

The highest-selling Kamejin Manga in Totania, written by Yagi Susumu, Quiet God (Shizukana Kami) is a story about Mikami Saburo, a Kamejin in a world where religion is an afterthought. The Gods have gone silent, and men take their place.

Plot

Mikami Saburo is on a journey to bring religion back to a world that has been abandoned by the Gods.

Faithful Arc

Saburo begins his trip on a farm in a nondescript coastal land. He has a shrine to the Gods which he keeps secret, which he maintains every day. He hears of soldiers in a nearby town from the Godless, the ruling class of the world. When he goes to check it out, he sees the soldiers desecrating his shrine and torturing townsfolk for information on who made it. They desire to know who the filthy worshipper of the Gods is, calling them the "faithful" which was, at the time, a curse.
Saburo decides that he has been hiding long enough, and that it is time he fights against the Godless. He reveals himself by killing one of the soldiers, and saying the now iconic line:

"I am the Faithful, and I've come to make you all repent."

— Mikami Saburo

Saburo was approached by childhood friend and rival Yagi Hiroki, who attacked him. Saburo assumed it was because he had revealed himself, but Hiroki said that he didn't care about that. Hiroki said "What kind of rival would I be if I disregarded your dream? This is because you never told me."
Hiroki then joined Saburo to help him achieve his dream. They found a note on one of the Godless soldiers telling them of a rumored land of Faithful that was to be exterminated, and decided they would go there to save them.
The final few chapters of this arc feature Saburo's backstory, where a young Saburo is told by his father that his family was a group of Priests who were wiped out by the Godless in their purge of the Gods and the Faithful. The young Saburo swore revenge, and now the teenage Saburo has set out to achieve this revenge for his family and his Gods.

Underground Arc

Saburo and Hiroki went to an underground cave system, where they found ruined shrines kept intact by shrine maidens. They met Kon Ran, a woman who was losing faith in the Gods that the shrine maidens were supposed to have. She was only keeping the shrines because she had to.
Saburo believed that this was not dissimilar from the people above ground who hated the Gods purely because the Godless forced her to. He hated this idea, and wanted to show Kon Ran that the Gods were real and should be believed in.
He gained this chance when a group of Godless led by Sakurai Masaaki invaded the cave and killed the Head Shrine Maiden. Saburo and Hiroki fought Masaaki, and as Saburo killed Masaaki, Kon Ran saw the Head Shrine Maiden's spirit behind Saburo, going up to the Heavens. She saw Saburo as a messiah-like figure, saving the Shrine Maidens and bringing them back to believing in the Gods.
Kon Ran then joined Saburo, falling in love with him and following him on his journey.

Graveyard of the Gods Arc

The Graveyard of the Gods was an area where many ruins were. It is believed this was once a giant Church where multiple Gods were worshipped, but little evidence remained. Saburo and company did find some hints about the power of the Gods, and Kon Ran even found the sword known as Betrayer, which had been used to kill the Gods.
It was also here they met a man named Iwai Takashi, who began to train them. He was an old man who had been around for the Gods, and knew that only if they were stronger could Saburo, Hiroki, and Ran take on the Godless.
The threat of this arc was Iwasaki Koji, a man who wished to steal relics and sell them for a high price. He had been hired by the Godless to find holy relics so they could destroy them. Saburo despised this, betraying the Gods for any goal was still betraying the Gods and had to be punished with death.
Saburo and Hiroki fought Koji, nearly killing him. However, both Saburo and Hiroki also suffered wounds that left them nearly dead. Then, Kon Ran found that Koji was sent by a man named Hori Hideki, a Godless man who commanded an army of trees.
Kon Ran fought Hideki while Iwai Takashi nursed Saburo back to health. Even in his near dead state, though, Hiroki managed to fight the entirety of the tree army on his own. Kon Ran, on the other hand, took out Hideki with her new sword.

City of Fortune Arc

The City of Fortune is an expansive saga, and is the second-to-last arc in the story.
Saburo escapes the Graveyard of the Gods with his team and finds that they are in a city known only as Dorado. It is made entirely of gold, and has challenges that the team must undertake. Yagi Hiroki is separated from the party early on by failing the first challenge, which was a test of luck.
For the rest of the arc, Hiroki is on his own, and gets a long part of the arc to shine. Meanwhile, Takashi leads Saburo and Ran through the rest of the city. Eventually, they make it to the ruler of the city, Kurokawa Hiroyuki. Upon fighting him, Saburo is defeated by his Gold Magic and they are forced to retreat.
Saburo is then forced to disguise himself as Kurokawa Hiroyuki announces a tournament, where the prize is a visit to his palace and a gift of a small portion of his gold (which is still more gold than anyone else on the planet owns). What Saburo is more interested in is Hiroyuki's golden cross, and whether Hiroyuki has faith in the Gods. If he does not, Saburo is ready to kill him without hesitation. At this point, Saburo has no patience for Godless and their beliefs.
The party all competes in the tournament. Hiroki is the only one not disguised, as he was not spotted with Saburo due to him losing the first challenge. Due to this, Saburo and co are unable to meet up with Hiroki, and he is alone even when they are with him. The final fight ends up with Hiroki versus Saburo, and ends with Saburo coming out victorious. However, Hiroki revealed Saburo's identity in their fight, and Saburo is unable to be declared the victor. Therefore, Hiroki wins by default and is taken to meet Hiroyuki.
Hiroki duels Hiroyuki and learns that Hiroyuki was a Faithful once, but was bribed by the leader of the Godless to use his strength for them. Hiroyuki offers the same deal to Hiroki, saying that Hiroki is just like him, strong and without a goal. He says that even their names are similar, but Hiroki says,

"Our paths may be similar, but our goals do not align! I will not betray Saburo, and I will not betray the Gods!"

— Yagi Hiroki

Hiroki and Hiroyuki have a fight, but like Saburo, Hiroki is unable to defeat him. Saburo and the others arrive to fight Hiroyuki after he is weakened by Hiroki, and believe they stand a chance. However, Kon Ran has her eye taken out by Hiroyuki, Iwai Takashi loses an arm, and Saburo is nearly killed. They are only saved in the nick of time by an old man who looks mysteriously like Saburo, who introduces himself as Mikami Masato, Saburo's grandfather.

Rise of Gods Arc

The final arc in the story begins with Saburo learning the truth of his heritage. He is not just the child of Priests, that is only his mother's side of the family. His father's side, the Mikami's, were the Godless. Mikami Masato himself was the one who killed the Gods and now leads the Godless.
Masato asks Saburo to join him, but Saburo refuses. To persuade him, Masato kills Iwai Takashi. However, Saburo manages to escape with them Hiroki's assistance. Hiroki had picked up some techniques from Hiroyuki, including one that made him incredibly fast. Kon Ran then brings them back to the Shrine Maidens, where they are healed up and they all train.
Kon Ran learns to not be afraid of the Betrayer, and that she now knows how to right its name. She can kill the one that used it to kill the Gods, Mikami Masato, and turn the sword back around. Then, it will have betrayed him, and will have a good reputation in the world to come.
Yagi Hiroki, meanwhile, trains his strength to become equal to that of Hiroyuki, giving himself the title of "Closest Man to God." He manages to move a rock that had been blocking the Underground from a secret temple for a long time. It is there that Saburo finds what he needs.
Ancient texts dating back to the beginning of time tell of Saburo's birth, or the birth of a man like him from back then. Born of both Godless and Faithful, the child's rivaling blood mixed into a great power. Saburo then read how he could use this power and, in conjunction with Kon Ran and Yagi Hiroki's powerups, challenges Masato again.
In this fight, Mikami Saburo attains the power he had read about. Godhood. In this, he reached Heaven for a short amount of time, where he met Iwai Takashi again. Takashi asked for Saburo to kill Masato and return faith to the people of the world.
With this newly attained power, Mikami Saburo becomes the Quiet God. Alongside the Closest Man to God, the Betrayer, and even a returned Iwasaki Koji, the Quiet God defeats the Godless and declares himself the new God of the world. After the fight, Masato apologizes to his Grandson and says the Gods had grown too corrupt. He said he had to kill them before they destroyed the world for their own amusement. The Quiet God, however, did not want to hear it, and killed his grandfather. For good measure, he also finally killed Iwasaki Koji, who he had been meaning to kill since they had met.
The final chapter begins with one last duel between himself and Hiroki, who says that now that Saburo has achieved his goal, Hiroki can challenge it. Hiroki says that Saburo has become corrupted by his power, and should let the people of the world decide whether he should be their God or not. Saburo fights Hiroki in a close battle, but ultimately kills his rival and declares himself the one true God. He marries Kon Ran, and rules tyrannically over the world he once sought to save.

Setting

The setting of Quiet God is never specifically stated, though locations were almost certainly based off of locations in Totania. Yagi Susumu is known to have visited many famous locations and sketched them for reference, and his office was lined with these sketches. It is believed the story takes place simply in post-apocalyptic Totania.

Characters

Protagonists

Mikami Saburo

Mikami Saburo, the protagonist, is a man who, despite all odds, still believes in the Gods. He has been raised in the Hell that has followed the Gods abandoning the planet. All he has in the world are two things, his trusty Katana and his faith.
He comes from a long line of priests, and remembers his father telling him a story of their family being wiped out by the Godless, which is what they call the people that don't believe in Gods and are believed to have caused the mess that caused the Gods to abandon the world.
Saburo, however, finds out that the truth was that his grandparents were the leaders of the Godless. In truth, Saburo's father became a Priest to rebel against his parents. His mother was, though, from a long line of priests, meaning that Mikami Saburo is a child of both Priests and the Godless.
Saburo finds that he can use a special power due to this convergence. He is able to channel the power of the Gods into his blade, and in the end he even claims the name of God, becoming the sole God to save the planet. The Quiet God.

Kon Ran

Kon Ran is part of Saburo's party, a shrine maiden from a hidden shrine to the Gods, she almost lost faith before Saburo arrived to save her. She then fell in love with Saburo, but was forbidden from getting with him due to her duty as a shrine maiden.
When Saburo became the Quiet God, though, she was finally able to be with him. As her duty was to God, she was able to truly love Saburo.
She was not just a love interest to Saburo. She even defeated antagonist Hori Hideki on her own, saving the nearly dead Saburo from Hideki's tree army. She wielded the sword called Betrayer, a sword that was believed to have slain the Gods themselves, and went through a story of coming to terms with it and turning its meaning around, betraying the Godless with their own traitorous blade.

Yagi Hiroki

The third member of Saburo's adventuring party, Yagi Hiroki was a childhood friend and rival to Mikami Saburo. He fought only with his fists, and over the course of their adventure gained the strength to stand up to even Saburo.
He joined Saburo's adventure because he felt that to truly be a rival to Saburo, he needed to support his dream. Then he could fight Saburo in a respectable manner.

Iwai Takashi

Saburo's mentor, a very old man who was around when the Gods were still worshipped, Takashi never believed he had a chance to see them again. He was killed by Mikami Masato, but when Saburo became the Quiet God, he saw Takashi in Heaven and Takashi cheered him on.

Antagonists

Mikami Masato

Mikami Masato, the main antagonist, is Saburo's grandfather, and the head of the Godless. Masato hides in the shadows for much of the story, puppeting many minor antagonists to fight Saburo. Masato wants Saburo to unlock his true power so that he can take the Godly power for himself.
Masato finally reveals himself to Saburo by killing an antagonist Saburo had been struggling with, Kurokawa Hiroyuki. Masato then asked for Saburo to join him. There, he revealed his past to Saburo. Saburo attacked him, but nearly died from not having the power to fight Masato. When Saburo returned later, he unlocked the power of the Quiet God and killed Masato.

Sakurai Masaaki

The first major antagonist, Sakurai Masaaki invades the land of the Shrine Maidens. He claims to be there at first to seek a wife, saying he wants a good Shrine Maiden because he knows they're loyal. He said if they can stay loyal to dead Gods that abandoned them, they can be loyal to a good man like himself.
Upon being rejected by the Head Shrine Maiden, he kills her and uses her as an example. It is only after he is killed by Saburo that it is discovered he was using this as an excuse to take the Shrine Maidens away from the Shrines for the Godless.

Iwasaki Koji

Koji was a thief who wished to steal relics from the Graveyard of the Gods for personal gain. He was hired by the Godless to steal holy relics, but in actuality it was revealed that he wished to take them for himself to divert the Godless's attention from important goings on. However, he was being manipulated by a Godless known as Hori Hideki.

Hori Hideki

The Godless commander who leads an army of trees, Hori Hideki is a man who claims to have learned the true power from the old God of Nature, and has learned to command the forces. He claims this proves that Gods were nothing more than men, but Kon Ran disagrees and says that it proves that Gods had immense power. He is then killed, like the other Gods, with the Betrayer.

Kurokawa Hiroyuki

The ruler of the City of Fortune, Hiroyuki is a dangerous man with Gold Magic who was never defeated in a fight. He was once a Faithful, but was bribed by Mikami Masato to become a Godless. Hiroyuki replaced his faith with personal wealth, and hoarded it to become something of a God in his own right. He is only killed by Mikami Masato, the Godless and the Killer of the Gods himself.

Publishing History

Quiet God began publication in 485, when Yagi Susumu was accepted into Dump Magazine. It was published weekly for five years before its publication was changed to monthly to help Susumu's health. The quality of the art and the writing improved drastically with this shift, but so did the length of arcs.
With more time came more ideas for Susumu, and the arcs became longer and longer, with the final two arcs being so long that they alone are longer than most other popular manga series. It was nearly canceled by Dump in 500 as part of their "New Century, New Stories" push, where they canned all currently running manga in favor of new manga that could be published throughout the 500s, however fan backlash ended up bringing back Quiet God and a few other fan favorites in 502.
After the two year hiatus, the final arc began, and a change in the writing style was evident. Many believed Susumu had changed up the way the characters, mostly Saburo, acted, but die-hard fans could tell that due to the end of the story approaching, some of Saburo's more subtle details (his God complex and incredibly violent nature) were coming to the forefront. It ended publication 30 years after beginning, in 515. Yagi Susumu then began publication of a new manga five years later called Curse of the Nocturnal, a story about Vampire roomates who both inconvenience each other with the habits they've picked up over hundreds of years of living.

Reception

Quiet God was, after ten years of publication, the highest selling manga. It became the highest selling fictional series in general after its republication in 402, and still tops sales charts to this day.
It has a die-hard fanbase who cosplay it at any convention they can, and defend its ending to their dying breaths. Many do hate the ending, saying it is out of character for Saburo to become an evil God, but Susumu stated from the very beginning that Saburo's goal was always selfish, and his murder of Godless was unnecessary.
He compared it to other protagonists from Dump properties, like the titular protagonist of manga Spider-Turtle, who would imprison his foes, or Soga Shichiro from Royal Aftermath, who recruited his enemies as followers to bring his family back to the throne. Susumu said he always intended for Saburo to subvert the classic Dump protagonist in this way, and therefore Saburo's ending was happy yet frustrating.
A statue of Saburo was built in Suzuishan to honor him in 496, and statues of Yagi Hiroki and Iwai Takashi were built in Susumu's hometown of Iwayako.

Adaptation

Quiet God was adapted into a four-part stage play. The parts were called:

• Quiet God: Under God's Nose
• Quiet God: The Ruins of Heaven
• Quiet God: Fortunate Son
• Quiet God: Death and Rebirth

These adapted the broad story beats, changing some things that would not be possible with special effects on stage. One notable one is Hiroyuki does not have his gold magic as he does in the manga, as no actor was willing or able to unlock Impossible Magic for the stage play.

Spin-Off

A Spin-Off of the manga was published with Iwai Takashi's backstory called Old Gods, where the world before the Godless was seen, and the story told the events that led up to and followed the death of the Gods. Its final chapter was Takashi staring down from Heaven, both proud and disappointed in Mikami Saburo's ascension to Godhood.