Hello, and welcome to the second blog of Project Nitsuj. You know video games can be very helpful in today’s society. They can better your reflexes, relieve stress, teach you life lessons, and even help you get girls to fall for you. What, you don’t believe? Then, you clearly haven’t heard, read, or seen The World God Only Knows. The World God Only Knows (TWGOK) is a manga that got started in 2008 and is written by Tamiki Wakaki with a light novel written by Mamizu Arisawa and illustrated by Tamiki Wakaki himself. This manga is still on-going and is actually one of my all-time favorite mangas. The story centers around a boy who’s forced to help a demon remove evil spirits called Loose souls from girls. The plot alone sounds cliché and off putting but what really makes this story work is the engaging characters, the good humor, and honest and real emotions. The manga had a slow following when it first came out but around the third volume it garnered enough popularity and support that it received an anime in the fall season of 2010 with a second season the following year (Yes, I’ll review it in the future), currently 3 ova’s and has been green lit for a third season. So what makes this manga and anime so great? Let’s take a look.
Opening/Ending Theme
The opening is God only knows sung by Oratorio. Now originally the song is a 6 minute song entirely composed from 5 or 6 parts. The song is sung entirely in English so it’s easy to listen to while looking at the opening animation. It’s nice; it’s got a nice holy choir tone to it that suits the main protagonist of the series. In fact it almost sounds as if the song is about him. The ending theme Koi no Shirushi which translates into The Sign of Love is sung by all the female leads in the anime. This song is also nice; it’s catchy, the girls all sound lovely and they each sing the song by themselves during their own story arc.
Ayumi Takahara and Mio Aoyama arc
So the story begins with oddly enough our main protagonist playing a dating sim game on his PFP (no doubt the cheap and archrivals of the PSP) in the middle of his class. He’s interrupted when his teacher tells him to put it away, but he just completely ignores her and continues to play his game. This in turn upsets the teacher and she whacks him with her notepad. We cut to a few minutes later in the hallway where we get an introduction to our main protagonist Keima Katsuragi voiced by Hiro Shimono who also did the voice for Akihisa Yoshii from Baka and Test (I know, quite a change in character). Keima has only one interest and one interest only: girls. No, not 3D girls 2D girls, he’s a man who considers himself to be a resident of the 2D world and has no interest in the real world whatsoever and shrugs off everybody to the point where not even his classmates and teachers want to be bothered with him. We never get a clear explanation as to why he acts this way or how he got this way not even the manga explains why he’s who he is. Anyway, we Keima is quite popular among other gamers is known as The Capturing God because his skills of being able to beat any dating sims or gal games out there. As he’s checking his e-mail and answering questions sent by other gamers he receives a strange e-mail asking him to take part in a game and that he should only answer yes if he really wants to. Keima not being one to back down gladly says yes and a portal opens up right in front of him and out pops a cute devil girl named Elsie voiced by Kanae Itō best known for her role as Amu Hinamori from Shugo Chara. Keima plays it cool and tries to walk away from this strange event but is stopped and told that he has made a contract with Hell and that if he doesn’t fulfill his contract his head along with her head will be cut off (https://youtu.be/6nSKkwzwdW4?t=3s).
So in order to fulfill the pact Keima has to get the Loose Soul which has inhabited the body of a girl from his class. The best way to do that is to make the girl fall for him. Keima is quick to reject the idea of hitting on real girls but after a quick pep talk from Elsie about using his capturing skills from video games to use them in real life he decides to give it a try. His first target is his classmate Ayumi Takahara voiced by Ayana Taketatsu who you might remember as Azure from K-On or Miharu from Baka and Test. She’s on the track team which is getting ready for a big meet in which she’ll be taking part in. Keima goes to the track and field to lend her support which Ayumi doesn’t take kindly to and thinks that Keima is trying to make fun of her. He continues to lend Ayumi support by putting up banners for a few days much to Ayumi’s displeasure until the day before the big meet when Ayumi gets hurt. Keima approaches Ayumi later that night saying that she was fine and that she wasn’t really injured. Ayumi confesses and says that she faked the injury because she was afraid that she would fail at the meet and didn’t want to let her team down. On the verge of crying Keima tells her not to worry about it and to just run with her might and that he would be there to support her no matter what. In that instant Ayumi is smitten by Keima and gives him a kiss in which the Loose Soul leaves Ayumi’s body and Elsie captures it. Ayumi earns a gold medal at the meet, gains the respect from her seniors, and unfortunately has forgotten completely about her relationship with Keima but not her feelings. The episode ends with Elsie transferring into Keima’s class under the disguise as his sister.
Episode 2 is split into two halves. The first halve revolves around Elsie trying to get Keima to accept her as his sister. Keima refuses to acknowledge her as his sister and tells her to remove the collar around his neck which is the symbol of his contract with Hell. Elsie informs Keima that the pact hasn’t been completed yet and that he must collect all of the Loose souls within his hometown in order for the pact to be completed. We also get to meet Keima’s mom who I’m not gonna lie is pretty hot. As for the father, we see anime cliché 23 at work here in which the father is a way on a business trip. At the end of first half Keima decides to accept Elsie as his little sister but only because it’s the best way to end this thing quickly. In the second half we get introduced to our second target Mio Aoyama a high society girl who looks down on everybody, doesn’t understand the value of money, and is tsundere. Keima approaches her thinking that this will be an easy target since she’s tsundere and does an outright confession to her. She responds by having her butler beat the crap out of Keima and not so much as flinching at his confession which surprises him. Keima and Elsie follow Mio back to her house which is revealed that she isn’t rich and has only been pretending to be rich to maintain face. It turns out her father died causing the family to lose their fortune and she’s been living in poverty ever since while the mother is out working. In the third episode her butler becomes fed up with her way of thinking and quits. Keima comes in and offers to serve as her butler. After a few days of serving as her butler Keima sees the good side of her and takes her to a high society party where Keima uses his smooth words and game knowledge to make her let go of the past, move on with her life, and get the kiss thus causing the Loose soul to leave her body. The next day she’s completely forgotten about her time with Keima but acts more humble and friendlier to him and finally understands the value of money.
Kanon Nakagawa and Shiori Shiomiya arc
The Kanon and Shiori arc are the longest arcs within the anime, each having 3 episodes. The Kanon arc begins on episode 5 (I’ll come back to episode 4, 8, and 12 near the end), Kanon is a popular idol who goes to the same school as Keima and is in the same class as him. What causes the Loose soul to enter her heart is that she’s afraid that people won’t acknowledge her existence. In flashbacks we see how everyone including her teacher never really acknowledged her existence when she was in school until she became an idol. When she first meets Keima, Keima doesn’t know who she is upsetting her and causing her to use a stun gun on him. After getting his name, Kanon vows that she will make Keima acknowledge her existence. She begins holding private concerts for Keima after school on the school’s rooftop but Keima still doesn’t acknowledge her existence (this is all a part of his plan) until through the power of the Loose soul Kanon becomes invisible right in front of Keima and Elsie and it is then that Keima acknowledges her existence. After that Keima and Kanon exchange emails and Kanon calls Keima up constantly talking about her worries and problems and ultimately becoming Kanon’s emotional support. On the day of her big concert Kanon goes missing and Keima is the only one who is able to find her. Kanon expresses that she’s still afraid about whether or not she’ll be a success but Keima encourages her to believe in herself and not to depend on other people’s affirmation including him. Filled with courage she thanks Keima with a kiss, the Loose Soul leaves her body, and the concert is a big success. There are two problems I have with this arc in the anime. First off, in the anime they made it so that she was afraid she would fail in public but in the manga she was afraid of people not acknowledging her existence. I guess it was their effort to relate the story to a more personal and real life problem. My second complaint about this arc is that it lags in the anime. They added a lot of stuff such as talking about her former band mates, Elsie trying to get information about her and joining Kanon’s fan club, and doing a montage of her day to day activities as an idol with an insertion song. While this isn’t bad and the insertion songs are good to listen to I just feel that we could have gone without seeing it and instead just focused on the story of Kanon.
The final girl of the season is Shiori Shiomiya voiced by the ever popular Kana Hanazawa who has a habit of voicing cute girls and little sister characters in anime. Shiori is a shy Liberian at the school and I swear you will never see a cuter and more adorable Liberian girl in your life. I mean it; every time she appears you just can’t help but want to hug her or smile at how adorable she acts. Anyway, Shiori’s problem is that she has trouble communicating with people because she has a tendency to overthink her sentences and thus seeks shelter in reading books. In order to get her to open up Keima gets on her bad side by doodling in books because they have the wrong information or saying how pointless some of the books are causing Shiori to call him an idiot in a loud voice which goes against her character. Eventually, the two are able to carry out a conversation with each other and get on good terms (it’s just like he said, hate can quickly turn into love). Unfortunately, Shiori receives some bad news. It turns out that the Library Committee has decided to put in a media center and that many books are to be disposed of. Shiori refuses to accept this and to oppose this decision she buys some good luck charms and locks herself within the library. Keima literally comes crashing through the roof saying that he wants to support Shiori. In the library Keima manages to tell Shiori that she’s afraid of her insecurities and offending people and that staying locked up in the library was her excuse of trying to escape. Shiori realizes that Keima was right and Keima gives Shiori a kiss thus giving her the courage to speak her mind about the media center causing it to be postponed and Shiori being freed from the Loose Soul. In an omake in the manga we find out that the media center does get built and that the books were sold to a local bookstore or bought by Shiori instead of being disposed of. We also see that Shiori is able to carry out conversations with others. She’s still shy but not as much as she used to be.
Manga Episodes
The manga episodes are episodes that are one-shot stories that take replace in between the arcs. I hesitate to call them filler episodes because the episodes are based off of real chapters within the manga that also take replace between arcs. In the first manga episode (episode 4) Keima forces Elsie to help him complete a game that is bugged and how he can’t quit the game because everybody else has given up on it. In the second manga episode (episode 8) Keima becomes fed up with Elsie and calls her a worthless demon. Elsie wanting to prove Keima wrong decides to make him a cake from Hell. The whole episode is told from the viewpoints of three people. Elsie making a cake, Keima surviving a day at school, and Keima’s mom getting ready for a parent teacher conference about Keima. This is probably the weakest out of all of the episodes this season because it really derived from the manga. In the manga the episode was split into two chapters. One focusing on Elsie and then the other focusing on Keima, Keima’s mom wasn’t even mentioned or seen in those two chapters and it all took place at the school. The final manga chapter (episode 12) is also the season finale in which Keima becomes upset at the fact that the capturing of the Loose Souls has interfered with him playing video games and thus he locks himself in his room where he goes into god mode and plays five games simultaneously to make up for lost time. With the exception of the last manga episode you can pretty much skip these episodes and not miss a thing in the overall story. You’ll probably get like one laugh out of each episode but other than that their not worth watching.
Final Thoughts
This anime is pretty good. When I first watched it I had my doubts but by the end of the first episode I was entirely hooked on the series. Keima is definitely different from your average male character in harem animes. While he may act like he has no interest in the real world he steadily begins to show interest in the real world as the series progresses and shows that he really in a sense does care about the girls he captures. Elsie is a good comic foil for Keima as well. She’s a very low demonic demon who doesn’t even act like demon. In fact, you probably would think she was an average girl if the series didn’t tell you at the beginning she was a demon. She’s ditzy, caring, cute, and realistic unlike Keima who prefers to rely only on the knowledge he’s obtained from playing games and making choices based from those games. The girls are also good. Each one has their own problem, their own personalities that sets them apart from each other and are relatable. We got Ayumi the track girl with no confidence in her abilities, Mio the rich girl who has a hard time moving on from the past, Kanon the idol who relies on the opinions of others to be recognize, and Shiori the girl who has trouble communicating with others. I think my favorite girl this season was Shiori because I can sympathize with her problem, I tend to overthink my sentences too and thus stumble in communicating with others. My only two drawbacks from the season are that they lag on Kanon’s arc. It could been done in two episodes if they wanted it to be and the manga episodes, they weren’t needed, weren’t all that funny, and could have been used to add in a the fifth girl which would have made for a good starting point for the second season.
Final Score
The World Only God Knows despite its simple flaws has earned a 7/10. The story is good, the characters are great, and it does a good job at making you relate to the characters and the problems that each go through. While the manga is better in my opinion watching the anime isn’t bad for a starting point and for helping you get into the series as a whole. So if you’re looking for a good comedy/romance anime without all the ecchiness I recommend checking this out and if you want to see how the knowledge you learn from video games can help you out in the real world I also recommend this anime. Well that’s all for now, I’ll see you next time on Project Nitsuj.
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