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The World God Only Knows
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God of Conquest? God of Objectification, more likely.
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:CreationDate: 2012-12-16 15:29:08
:Id: anime/review/world-god-only-knows
:tags: - anime
- review
:rating: 1.5
:original: https://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.
