If I’m recalling my manga industry information correctly, I believe that many manga from new artists get their starts through competitions or pitches submitted during open submission periods to comic publishing companies in Japan, but Adachitoka probably had a bit of an advantage in getting Noragami accepted, given they already had a good track record with the company; they illustrated a series by another author that was published in the same magazine as Noragami. They likely pitched their idea for their original manga and got accepted fairly easily (or at least were not rejected!).

The first chapter of Noragami shows all the signs of being a pilot chapter. This chapter was likely part of the original pitch made by Adachitoka to the publishing company to demonstrate their technical skill and capability for creating and capturing characters completely of their own. It tells a relatively self-contained story that introduces the main character (Yato) and main elements (gods, shinki, and ayakashi) that Adachitoka wanted to focus on in their longer story. It does the job of getting people interested in more, without leaving readers completely hanging just in case that “more” never occurred. Pilot chapters may not be completely orphaned from the series that produced them (like Naruto’s weird little pilot chapter for example), but even so, most of the time they don’t have any real bearing on the rest of the series plot.

Because this chapter was likely originally a pilot (although take this with a grain of salt, I don’t know this for sure!), I’d be cautious in taking anything that happens in this chapter as written rule or guaranteed applicable to the main plot of Noragami overall. As often occurs in pilot chapters, sometimes ideas and the “rules” of the series canon change dramatically, and elements that were present in the plot get dropped from the actual series later on.

So my thought is that, while the first chapter of Noragami is entertaining and brings up some interesting ideas (like the little monster born from Mutsumi’s wish), I probably wouldn’t necessarily assume that it has deeper significance beyond just introducing the world and characters to us readers.

That’s my thoughts, anyway, but I think you said you had a theory on this, right? Share it with me! 😀