Review of The World God Only Knows
I was looking forward to this show this season as i found the manga to be really enjoyable and having a pretty cool protagonist at the same time. Kami Nomi is about Keima, an otaku and a super gaming otaku at that, he's known as the Capturing God who can capture any girls heart as long as the in a video game. Keima soon receives an email that peeks his interest only to find he's signed a contracts with a demon. He is now tasked with capturing loose souls that reside in girls hearts by filling in the gaps with love. The show is split upinto arcs that feature the four girls. The first two only take up an episode each but these are used to introduce our main characters and show us what this Anime is going to be like. but the other two girls take up a few episodes each split up by filler episodes before and after that give us more insight as to how dedicated Keima is to gaming, like how many he can play at once, i just feel sorry for who ever pays the electricity bills.
The art is pretty good, better than a lot of shows by a long way but does lack a little originality that other shows do have, i tends to use odd expressions frequently and even forms chibi versions of a character to highlight and make the comedy more funny. The animation is a decent part, its pretty smooth and really helps when certain scenes are completely exagerated for comedic effect.
Sound is one of the better areas, the opening is great and original, the full song is something like 8 minutes in length and as well as opening the show parts of the full song are used as background music. One of the featured girl characters is an idol and her singing is nice, the voice actor is new to voice acting but you can really tell she excells at singing. The voice acting in general is pretty tame, its outstanding but they portray their characters personality perfectly.
Characters are wonderful though not exactly new. Keima is an excellent protagonist, he has no interest in the 3D world or reall girls he only has eyes for video game yet still mangaes to get perfect scores at school, he is forced into a contract and then forced into dealing with real girls and uses his knowledge of conquering a girls heart from games and puts it into use in capturing souls. Elsea is the demon that contracts Keima and is genrally a clumsy girl who tends to be completely useless as she either just watchs Keima or gets him into difficult situations, she also has a scarf that can transform into anything, how conveniant. Ayumi is the first girl to be captured and is a typical athlete character and is bullied by sempai. Mio is a rich snob and acts accordingly but only in appearence. Kanon is an idol and is afraid of disapearing and has issues when people don't pay attention to her on stage and was once part of a music group. Shiori is the quite library girl who does all her talking inside her head and has trouble expressing how she feels because of this. All other characters don't really offer anything and are pretty stereotyped like Kanons manager, Keimas teacher, library chairman, Keimas Mother does have a few funny moments too.
The show as a twelve episode series is not that great, its a show that needs a lot more episodes to really flesh the characters out more and thankfully a second series is being made. It has enough funny moments to keep you interested but does unfortunately leave you a little underwhelmed, as a fan of the manga it is a bit disappointing but is by far not the worst show you could watch that incorparates romance and comedy.