Review of The World God Only Knows

I went into The World God Only Knows because of the recommendation of a friend who considered it one of the best anime/manga out there. Just 1 season of the anime into it, and I already find it hard to disagree with this. So right now, I feel like doing all I can to tell people why I consider it an amazing anime that you should totally check out. The story of this anime is about a handsome nerd named Keima, who has a sense of superiority over humanity because he understands the fictional girls in his dating sims. However, because he has considered himself amaster of conquering these fictional girls, the underworld decides that he can do the same in real life. So a cute demon girl name Elsie shows up to reveal that he must capture spirits that have trapped themselves in the bodies of different girls. In order to avoid death for both of them, he must now win the hearts of these girls and kiss them so that Elsie can capture these lost spirits. And this begins what I can only describe as a unique twist on the usual "____ of the week" type of story. While not literally every week, Keima continues to find girls he has to have fall for him for the sake of his life. These girls range from a supposed rich girl to a pink haired pop idol, each with their own distinct personalities.

The main thing that shocked me was how much I really cared about these girls, especially the ones given the most focus. Now Elsie is more the sweet fake sister of Keima instead of a love interest but she might be my favorite. Her main purpose seems to be the naive, cute girl who learns about Keima and the human world. And despite that not being the most deep or creative character (at least in theory), it all seemed more genuine than most attempts at a similar character, and she genuinely put a smile on my face when she was on screen, especially because of her endearing actions throughout this part of this series.

There is also Kanon and Shiori. Kanon is a pop idol teen who is increasingly annoyed at Keima's apathy towards her and her performing and Shiori is (to an almost absurd degree) a shy girl who loves reading above all else. Both have fairly similar yet different arcs that involve them overcoming their insecurities, one involving a need for attention, and one coming from a fear or inability to speak out against anything. In both cases, Keima eventually figures out a plan based on what he knows of girls in games in order to slowly but surely get these girls to fall for them. However, he seems to slowly gain some respect for real life girls through these events and while his guesses are shockingly accurate, the girls tend to surprise him despite that. It seems like the series is trying to say a lot of things about stereotyping and assuming things about people and about nerds. One thing I've at least gotten out of it is how many elements of the story could be considered sexist and yet it never feels that way. The series seems more than self-aware enough so that it avoids this being about how a guy can conquer women and is more about a guy discovering things about the world while also using his incredible nerd knowledge to help teenager girls' insecurities. It seems to be on this impressive line that most writers wouldn't be able to stay on and its intelligence is one of the things that elevates it to greatness. Despite being based on the cliche of a teenage girl who is also a pop idol, I found Kanon's story to be the most believable. Just the idea of a famous teenage girl so desperate to always be the center of attention is very sad and real to me based on how real life celebrities can end up like. Shiori's was arguably the most over-the-top and silly but her character I also found the most sympathetic. I'm already sympathetic to this type of character but it being written as well as it was made it even more so.

It is really astounding how much I cared about these characters. Like more than I usually expect, even from a lot of great anime. But unlike many anime I've seen in recent years where it had to be overly depressing for that to happen, this series is uplifting and always ends with a happy ending that genuinely makes you feel glad you watched it. It's the type of thing I wish a lot of fiction understood about emotion. And while the serious stuff is great, the other thing that makes this such a joy to watch is the comedy. This series made me laugh pretty hard a few times, and I was consistently laughing throughout the series, which is really rare. I'm kinda interested in how these scenes were in the manga, because transitioning comedy from one medium to another seems like a difficult process to get down. But this one makes that look effortless, because the timing is brilliant in this series. They always know, when to start a joke, when to end it and how long to keep it going. There's just enough obvious ones or built up jokes along with stuff that is random enough that it makes you laugh but not random enough (or too frequently random) that it gets old like certain wacky series. The shocking amount of western pop culture references were also great. Elsie in particular got a lot of laughs from me, which is a big reason why she's my favorite character right now. And this comedy is what helps make the sad and dramatic stuff even better, because you get this sense of likability and fun from the comedy so that you care when sad stuff happens. It is so simple, yet so great.

The art and animation are both really solid. They're nothing you're gonna praise as brilliant like I just did for the rest of this, but it does what it needs to do and does it quite well and that's basically all I ask for. It's nice, colorful, didn't have any mistakes I noticed, was animated decently, was fun to watch as an animated series. It's cool. The music though is great. The composer of the background music has done mostly work in JRPGs and similar titles and you can tell. There's this one scene in particular that tries to make how many different types of books there are into this grand, epic, emotional scene and it works because the music is epic in all the right ways. And that's fairly consistent with the series, just great compositions all around. The Opening too (Ending's pretty good too). It starts out as a fairly typical but extremely well done J-Pop song but then turns into this more holy sounding (only way I can describe it) mixed with I think hints of auto-tune, which is perfect for a series about a game nerd God like the protagonist in this series. Just love that. Voice acting is great too. Pretty every performance is as believable and fun as it needs to be.

If I had one very minor complaint, is that the last episode of the first season didn't feel amazing enough for the series it was in. It was still really good and there are more seasons so whatever, but it could've ended that a bit better I feel...

So I genuinely love this series and I can assume that it stays as good in the sequel seasons or the manga. It is pretty much a masterpiece and if I can, I'd like as many people as possible to give it a chance.