The World God Only Knows: Season 1 Blu-ray Review
Hell on Earth.
Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman, January 11, 2012
One of the very first videogames my then very young sons got was
Luigi's Mansion, which if memory serves was
a GameCube outing featuring Mario's semi-mute twin in an adventure in a haunted house. Luigi ambled in his comical
way through the many rooms of the mansion and encountered all sorts of spectral bad guys, most of whom he had to
suck up into his giant vacuum cleaner nicknamed the Poltergust 3000. The sucking process was always a bit of a trial,
and my boys would typically enlist my aid as levels were coming to a close and they needed a little extra virtual muscle.
The spirits, who weren't all that thrilled to be ending their haunting days by getting encapsulated in Luigi's device,
would often bounce around the room and elongate as Luigi aimed the nozzle of the Poltergust 3000 at their spectral
forms. Anyone who has memories of
Luigi's Mansion may have more than a bit of déjà vu if they watch
The
World God Only Knows, for this series, which blends a number of elements which are reminiscent of several other
animes (as seems to be more and more the case these days), also has a recurring motif which caps virtually every
episode where a rather cute little "demon" from the bowels of Hell named Elsie sucks up "loose souls" into various
containers that look for all the world like those old Ball jars your maiden Aunt use to preserve fruit and jam in. As in
Luigi's Mansion,
The World God Only Knows' spectral entities don't seem overly thrilled about getting
vacuumed up into a small container, and they bounce, stretch and moan as Elsie manages to round them up in an
attempt to do the dirty work (or perhaps the cleaning work, as the case may be) for her masters from down below.
Elsie is helped in her task by a nerdy high school kid named Keima Katsuragi, a kid more intent on playing videogames
than he is in managing the affairs of real life, let alone aiding a cute little sprite from Hell.
The World God Only Knows: The Complete Collection is at least a partially misleading title for this collection, as
it
only covers the series' first season of 12 episodes (plus a very brief animated prelude which was part of a live action
introductory OVA). The series establishes its premise quickly in its first couple of episodes. Keima is a bishōjo gamer,
that
is, a kid who spends his time in Dating Sims environments where he gets to "conquer" one nubile female after another.
He has become something of an internet legend for his gaming skills, though of course the flip side is that Keima has
zero
(as in zip, zilch, nada) social skills in real life, and shrinks from even casual contact with those of the opposite sex.
Keima
receives what appears to be a challenging email one day, one which supposedly questions his skills to conquer any
female
with whom he comes in contact, and Keima, feeling up to that challenge, hits his "reply" button. That is when quite
literally all Hell breaks loose. It turns out the email was actually a demonic contract which requires Keima to partner
with
Elsie to collect "loose souls" which are hiding out in any number of the town's young female population. (Isn't that
always
the way?)
It turns out of course that Elsie was under the mistaken impression that Keima's internet persona matched his actual
real life one, which couldn't be further from the truth. Unfortunately, Keima's contractual obligation courtesy of hitting
the reply button has saddled him with an explosive collar locked around his neck which will detonate if the requisite
number of "loose souls" isn't collected and returned to whatever ring of Hell they belong to. And so a sort of anime
Odd Couple is born, one highlighted by the fact that Elsie shows up masquerading as Keima's little sister at
school by the end of the first episode.
The World God Only Knows is a really odd amalgamation of ideas that has little snippets of everything from
Soul Eater to any number of traditional
shōnen outings. There's a structural problem with the series,
one that is so endemic to its premise that it becomes at least a potentially major stumbling block. What it boils down to
is this: if Keima and Elsie fail to capture any given episode's "loose soul," that means Keima's head explodes and the
series ends. Not much suspense there, is there, folks? And so what the series evolves into is an episodic foray into
one female character after another needing to fall in love with Keima so that their loose soul is released. (Did I mention
that falling in love was the trigger? Well, of course it is, why else would Elsie need a "conqueror"?) There's little
question that more or less every episode (a couple of arcs spill into more than one episode) is going to end with a kiss
between Keima and the female of the moment, so whatever fun the series generates is in the getting there rather than
the destination, so to speak.
As far as that aspect goes,
The World God Only Knows often provides some fun elements, most of which derive
from the often bristling,
Odd Couple-esque interplay between Keima and Elsie. The various females who waft in
and out of different episodes are a mixed lot at best, with various kind of nonessential back stories (at least with
regard to the overall arc of the series), and a plot device which leaves them all with amnesia about the Keima-Elsie
events after their "loose souls" have been redeemed. This is a weird sort of anime analog to all those live action series
which were so popular in the 1960's, when one or two "travelers" of some sort would journey from locale to locale,
interact with the denizens of that week's town or city, and then move on. (Think of everything from
Route 66 to
The Fugitive to
Wagon Train to
Star Trek to the little remembered Rod Serling western
The
Loner). That means the only through line this series has to offer is the relationship between Keima and Elsie. The
good news here is the series does deliver some decent comedy, especially with regard to Keima's dating-sim obsession
and Elsie's frequent misunderstandings of the differences between life in Hell and life on Earth (those
are
different, aren't they?).
