The Neet detectives have been in vacation for a week now and we are ready to see just how good those kids really were.
Animation & Art
The art and animation for Kamisama No Memo-Chou was good, there was no great flaw I could ever see, but at the same time there was never this scene that felt more beautiful than reality. There were some great plot twist, but in term of animation and art, there was never anything overly spectacular, it was always just above average, but never godly.
There was absolutely nothing wrong with it, it is fun to see a show that doesn’t need to use typical manga facial expression because they don’t have enough budget for real facial expression from their characters. In the end the show wins a 8/10 from me for Animation and Art. Quite decent I must say.
Rating 8/10
Characters
There were many characters in Kamisama No Memo-chou, but it was only 13 episodes long and I feel that only a select few character were allowed to develop and even them had it hard. The only characters we saw change a little in the anime were Narumi, Ayaka and the Fourth, everyone else stayed the same. Even Alice, which is the iconic character of the show, doesn’t change from the pre-air to the final. I think the cast might have been too big for the small amount of episode of Kamisama no Memo-chou. The fact that there were 2 worthless filler during the season out of those 13 episodes doesn’t help character development either.
Now. even if we disregard character development, a lot of character had no depth what so ever. While Alice, Narumi, Fourth had some depth to their character, every other one was just flat. I understand how flat character might be important for a detective show, but I don’t like it when I am introduced to characters in the pre-air that are important character, but that even while important those character never changes and are never shown to have anything else in their head than what they show in their everyday lifes.
In the end I was disappointed with the characters of Kamisama No Memo-chou, they were not terrible, but they were uninteresting.
Rating 6/10
Original Sound Track & Opening/Closing theme:
I don’t feel like the OP or the ED, or any music in the show really, was anything really special. I’m never a great judge for those things, but I still think that If I can’t recall a single moment when the music was awesome, it means it was average. Since I can’t remember any moment were the music was terrible either, that means that it was not terrible either. Hence I give a 7/10 for the music.
Rating 7/10
Storyline
The stories of Kamisama No Memo-Chou are somewhere between good and great, there was no bad mini-arc. There were some really bad fillers, but those are not part of the story, so they don’t mean a thing here. They tried to have meaningful twist to everyone of their story and it worked, but sometimes it felt a little like the twist was the only thing truly interesting in the arc and everything else is just there to support the twist.
The stories were always contrasting between the friendly NEET and the warm feeling everyone felt when they were part of the gang and to contrast it there was always some grim and very tough endings to the arc. After all Alice is a speaker for the dead, so I guess that death and unhappiness was to be expected. But it was always interesting to see the smiling NEET enter the scene of a suicide to complete their case.
Overall the story was never bad, but at the same time I feel like it was simply not great enough to put this show above any other. The story was better than most other show, but since it was always short stories the stories also felt a little less meaningful than the great arc of 13 episodes of certain anime.
In the end I give a 8/10 for the story of Kamisama No Memo-Chou.
Rating 8/10
Overall Entertainment Value
Kamisama No Memo-Chou was just not fun enough, there were very intense twist, but they lasted for only 20 or so minutes if you put them all together, that is less than 1/13 of the shows length. Everything else ranged between good and horrible. The fillers were completely unnecessary and they are the biggest reason why I did not enjoy this show. I felt like every arc looked fun and really good only because the fillers were so shitty in contrast. I don’t want to watch boring and meaningless fillers in a serious show like Kamisama No Memo-Chou, if they really wanted to includes those short stories they should have made OVAs, not integrate them in between arcs.
The arcs were good, the fillers were terrible, so if you average it out, it doesn’t look too good for this show. It was no pain to watch, but I think it is only worth a 7/10
Rating: 7/10
Conclusion
In the end, I feel like the show had a really great concept, but it was rushed. The character were never able to develop, the art was nothing special, neither was the music. The story had awesome twist but those damned fillers canceled anything good that came out of the show. So I have to say that to me Kamisama No Memo-Chou was really average and that I would not recommend watching it if you have not already started, it is not bad, there are just better shows out there for you to waste your time on.
Final Rating: 7/10
ZeroG signing off