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+==========================
+ The World God Only Knows
+==========================
+
+God of Conquest? God of Objectification, more likely.
+=====================================================
+
+:CreationDate: 2012-12-16 15:29:08
+:Id: anime/review/world-god-only-knows
+:tags: - anime
+       - review
+:rating: 1.5
+:original: http://www.easternkicks.com/reviews/the-world-god-only-knows
+
+I've watched the whole first season of this series hoping for some
+redeeming feature, but I couldn't find any. Oh, the animation is not
+bad at all, the songs are average-j-pop-cute, there's some humour,
+there's even visual references to old anime (although there's no real
+reason for them, they just happen). So why do I dislike this much?
+Let's start from the story.
+
+KATSURAGI Keima is a master of dating simulation games: he's
+constantly playing and winning (and also keeping up his grades at
+school, without apparently ever studying or even paying attention in
+class). This has led to his title of "God of Conquest". In the
+meantime, in Hell, there's a problem with "loose souls": they've
+escaped from Hell, they have occupied the hearts of some young girls,
+and the only way to bring them back is to make the girls fall in love,
+thus pushing the loose souls out of their hearts. The "God of
+Conquest" is obviously the person best suited to the job! (Thus
+proving that even Hell has a rather poor intelligence network). The
+demon Elsie (conventional klutzy girl) is dispatched to the human
+world (i.e. Japan) to assist him. Keima is not thrilled at the idea,
+partly because he has already signed the contract without realising,
+and failure to deliver will mean both he and Elsie will lose their
+heads; mostly, though, because he much prefers the girls in the games
+to the real ones. Under duress, he accepts his task and tries to woo
+the "possessed" girls using his vast knowledge of dating sims.
+
+Which would be a valid (although not exactly original) starting point
+for a reflection on the shortcomings of multiple-choice simulations
+designed to fulfil the romantic wishes of customers when used as a
+guide to real-world relationships. But that is precisely the opposite
+of what this show says: Keima's techniques, which are clearly shallow
+and manipulative, work perfectly every time! And the girls are
+conventional stereotypes, as well: the sports-loving one, the rich
+snotty one with a secret, the insecure idol, the pathologically
+introverted librarian. They all match common in-game archetypes, and
+their behaviours follow simple patterns that were well established in
+games and manga decades ago (and probably long before that, in
+theatre).
+
+Elsie is essentially a comic relief character, who very rarely does
+something right, and gets regularly berated for what she does and for
+her ignorance of the ways of the human world. She has no agency, and
+the one time she tries to do something on her own, she produces
+monsters.
+
+Even Keima's mother, Mari, is a bad character: when Elsie shows up in
+their household, presenting herself as Keima's illegitimate
+half-sister, Mari gets understandably upset and angrily calls her
+husband to demand explanations. Keima explains this behaviour, not as
+a perfectly normal reaction to the upending of everything she knew,
+but "oh, she's scary, she was in a biker gang when she was young". And
+after that initial show of rage, she never mentions her husband again,
+and happily accepts Elsie in her house.
+
+So what do we learn from this series? That girls are simple and easily
+seduced, that ignorance and lack of practise is the same as stupidity,
+that only violent women get really angry, that ruining a family only
+warrants a minute of screen time and has no serious consequences.
+
+«But no,» I hear you say, «it's all done ironically, they obviously
+mean the exact opposite of what you think!» Well, that's essentially
+the "redeeming feature" that I was looking for. And I honestly
+couldn't see it. Sure, there's a few times where Keima's expression
+seems to imply that he's actually having feelings for the various
+girls (total screen time of the feelings: maybe one minute over the
+entire season), but that does not stop him from lying his way into
+their hearts, and from spending the entire last episode expressing his
+love for games and his dream of leaving this world for what is,
+essentially, a harem full of multiple-choice girls. And from some
+descriptions I've read of the second season, things are not going to
+get better.
+
+So, if you like a harem fantasy with no consequences, and you like
+your female characters really bi-dimensional, you'll probably enjoy
+this series. Me, I'm off to find something nicer to wash off the bad
+aftertaste.
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