After such a huge cliffhanger where it looked like Keima realized that the real world had some importance, he is now back into Gamers’ World and it doesn’t look like he has changed much Awwwww.
This week, Keima even decides to bring Elci to the dark side! He wants her to know more about games, and at first we think it’s because he wants them to get closer, but it turns out all he wants is for her to get a game while he’s out to a game fair facepalm I agree with Elci statement to follow.
Then follows a quick introduction to games, which explains why Keima still believes that 2D girls are the best WTF WERE THE LAST EPISODES ALL ABOUT THEN?! GRRR. As the episode goes on, everything is all about Elci as she tries to learn more about gaming and its subtleties for example, 3 games that look ALL THE SAME but that are, in fact, different O.o wtf. Her being Elci and quite dumb, she fails miserably, however for once Keima doesn’t get mad at her in the end it’s a MIRACLE! and the first part of the episode ends.
In the second part, Haqua shows up! Just as Keima expected to do nothing else but gaming for the day, he had to get everything ruined and was forced to communicate with the outside world. Haqua then asks Keima and Elci to help her out with her report on her humongous FAILURE small mistake since she can’t remember everything. After Elci has decided that she wasn’t taking any of this seriously as usual, Haqua blackmails Keima into helping her out since she can answer questions about loose souls. With this, they start taking it as seriously as Elci did, and it ends up in dirty things “doll version” on the model and violent things “human version” on Keima Bonus! An Elci is also included in the package.
In the end, Haqua leaves at night after repairing the catastrophe her and Elci started she doesn’t fail to remember to act tsundere-like for all the boys out there who love tsundere characters.
Impression
Hum, hum hum… I dunno what to think. As much as I love this show, this episode deceived me a little, especially concerning the main plot that we got from the end of last episode.
First off, Keima’s reaction about gaming and real life was a little way too rapidly wrapped up. I mean, I would have liked to get an explanation as to why Keima was back to his gaming methods so freakin’ fast, if only just a 5 minute reflection on it. Now, it just seemed as though Keima was back to his “2D characters are much better than real life”, with nothing else to say about his “epiphany” from last episode. I expected this show to be different from other romance shows that tend to stretch everything that should have been over much before… I would hate to be deceived, and I hope that the reason Keima was back to normal was just for filler purposes…
I will not give up hope! As I said before, this show has surprised me several times, let’s see what it brings us and let’s hope that the next arc will once again involve Keima :). If they still act as though nothing had happened, I might just walk around town and kill a cat and that would be sad, because cats are just so awesome. I love cats.
Haqua is back! Just like some people mentioned, she’s the tsundere character of the story, and although I usually don’t like tsundere characters she doesn’t piss me off as much, probably because she still has a “normal” side to her. I do believe I still like Elci more though… Not that I would want her to be paired up with Keima that would just be plain weird, but I still want her to have a bigger part in the story than Haqua :).
Talking about Elci, I just said 2 lines ago that I wouldn’t want her to be paired up with Keima, however I can’t help but love the fact that she seems to be interested in him. It makes everything so much more eventful and funny, moreover what would a romance show be if the 2 main characters didn’t have some cute times together? Poor her though, I think even if she yelled it out that she liked Keima this guy wouldn’t care and ditch her for a game any second and yet I still freaking love him. Her trying to learn about gaming was also pretty funny. She’s really cute! ^.^ Yes, I just had to end this review with this simple sentence that I’ve overused many times. It’s so true though 😀.
Update concerning this season: We have been deceived. It’s only 12 episodes. Grr.
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Well, I’ll agree with you that this filler episode did seem out of place. Though it was pretty close with the manga. Except for that one game that Keima pulled out of the Clearance bin which will become important later. IMO the episode would have been a tad better if it was before the Chihiro arc. Tea For Three is before it anyway, in the manga. I’m actually half-expecting a 3rd season at this point, and I’m gonna tell you why. The preview picture for the next episode includes characters from a bit further into the manga. Too far, of course, for it to happen this season. I really do hope we get a third season. The character from the preview is my personal favorite.
I. WANT. A. THIRD. SEASON. PERIOD.
And yeah, I guessed that this filler arc probably came beforehand in the manga, but I had nothing to prove it XD.
Well, this is not a filler, in the manga it’s the same.
Well there are a few differences like the one who actually said there were 60,000 more spirits (remember the Dragon Ball spoof?) was mentioned by Haqua in the manga and not Elsie (as shown in the anime). This episode (as stated above) was an actual issue of the manga before the Chihiro arc.
You can consider them the ‘slice of life’ episodes much like the ones in the first season (cake episode, the bugged game episode), but the purpose of such episodes is to perhaps give a glimpse of some aspects of the characters that aren’t shown in the main capture arcs.
From the first half we can easily derive that Elsie is still a little flustered when Keima appears to get close to her and she’s at least trying to understand him to some degree. We could have already figured this out somewhat during the Mio arc (first season) when Keima was practicing his confession lines to Elsie in the classroom.
The second half reinforces the first with regards to Elsie due to
1) Elsie throwing a fit when she saw the Haqua and Keima doll doing something naughty due to Haqua’s last command in the microphone (“So this is what you were doing!”) and…
2) Elsie just going inside and locking Keima out of the house after she figures that Haqua just went over so that she could see Keima. In the manga, this is emphasized a bit more when Elsie says something along the lines of “Haqua never asked for anyone’s help writing reports back when they were still in school” and in the anime Haqua says “I can write my own reports” which is almost the same but has less impact I think.
Also if you noticed Haqua keeps insisting on shaking hands with Keima which might make one think it’s her tsun-tsun excuse to hold hands with him like “Be thankful that I’m letting you shake my hand, it’s not like I want to hold your hand or anything like that.”
Regarding you not liking the episode as much, I’ve already noticed that some of these side stories are the weak point of the anime and I’ve come to accept it. To be honest I only disliked the cake episode in season one and was mostly neutral to the bugged game episode. I kinda enjoyed this one as a nice break. At least I liked it more than the cake episode. As long as the main arcs are well done it should be fine, I guess.
Also I noticed that Tenri and Diana (characters a bit further in the manga) were shown in the ending picture! Perhaps to give me hope for a third season that may never come. T^T
WOAH THAT WAS A LONG COMMENT! (I think the longest you’ve written lol :P)
Now that you remind me, it’s true that I said that before about the “in-between” episodes (since they’re not technically fillers), they’re very useful in order for us to understand the characters. I guess that, since it was done after the Chihiro arc which was focused exclusively on Keima, I forgot a little about that and didn’t find this episode as interesting. Now that I think about it, it is useful to know a lot more about Elci and Haqua (and the love triangle going on between them and Keima) and this episode had its use, however I guess it’s the order that failed this time… Had it been before the Chihiro arc I think it would have been way more interesting.
Because of those 2 characters that show up further in the manga, I think there will be a 3rd season. At least, there better be, because I hate reading manga, especially when shows are very well animated like this one (according to everyone I talked to, anyways).