Synopsis: With help from Vulcanus, the third goddess, the Ancient Demon blade in Kanon has been removed. However, she still remains unconscious. Keima must search for the remaining goddesses and restore their power, but one of the potential hosts approaches him first. Does Keima have a way to handle a heroine who doesn’t follow the dating sim model?
Impression:
Yui! What have they done to you?! Or, more specifically, what have they not done to you?! If I hadn’t read the manga (yes, I am going to bring this up every time I write a review for The World God Only Knows… get used to it…) I wouldn’t have had a clue what was going on for half of this episode. Why is Keima dressed as a girl, I would have asked? Why does this girl like dressing like a boy, I would have pondered? Why did it take so long for this goddess to awaken, I would inquire. Episode 5 of The World God Only Knows was good, but it was rushed. Info dumps were tacked on for anime only viewers and it ultimately took away from the flow of the episode.
The info dumps were actually kind of useless. I doubt any anime only viewer is going to have any attachment to Yui after hearing about small snippets from hers and Keima’s pasts, I for one certainly wouldn’t. I fell in love with Yui’s character during her initial arc because of the ridiculous amounts of character development that occur, making her into the gender confused lovable mess that we see today; anime only viewers will only have seen her as she is now and it won’t make any sense. Yui was brilliant in this episode (for all the time they give her anyway), her character really had a chance to shine and try she did, but, ultimately, what could have been an amazing date scene felt rushed and somewhat subdued. One of the only times Yui truly had a chance to shine (and so the character anime only viewers had no idea existed) was the lunchbox scene in which she does the manly thing and eats Keima’s cr*ppy food… oh Yui, I’m sorry they did this to you. Don’t worry, I’m sure the anime only viewers will go back and read your arc… for me?
All the aside, this episode had a couple focuses, the first being, of course, Yui and Keima’s date, the second being Elsie’s return, the disappearance of immediate danger from Kanon being the third and the appearance of Keima’s teacher on his… roof being the fourth.
I guess we should finish up on the Keima and Yui date discussion? Yeah, let’s do that. The date itself was… well it was a date? Whilst it was interesting to watch Keima on the other end of the conquest (and sometimes much funnier too), I wouldn’t have minded a more direct approach from Keima and I don’t actually think Yui would have minded either. That said, Keima knows best and the only definite way he knew to get those wings out was to go back to the basics… so to speak. Oh! And you’ve gotta love Haqua… sacrificing herself like that… beautiful… (a.k.a, I love it when Haqua gets naked!)
And, before we continue, I’d listen to mention this weeks animation… it was definately flawed in some places… yeah… for example, when Yui ‘shoves’ that guy who is harassing Keima… that was some pretty badly animated stuff, y’know? Hopefully they don’t make a habit of poorly animating ‘supernatural’ scenes.
Onto Elsie’s return! I doubt she’ll be around much longer… because, y’know, Kanon’s still unconscious ‘n all that jazz. I don’t actually think they’ve described how they’re going to even save Kanon… at this point it almost seems as if Keima is running around without a defined plan. For example, I think this is third time now that Shiori has seen Keima flirting with another girl… as a girl… And what’s up with that school’s teachers? You’d think they’d have stricter rules about school uniform and it’s appearance on students of the other gender (that said, if you wanna cross dress, I ain’t going to stop you)? And how did absolutely no one notice that Keima was running around as a girl? If I did that in my school I’d be attacked by a lynch mob…
And now, for the final point… just what is Keima’s teacher doing on the roof and why is she following him around? Firstly, the people in this town must be really ignorant as nobody seems to notice oddities such as women hanging around on roofs. But I digress, is the teacher a part of vintage? A spy perhaps? At this point in time there’s no way to know but speculation never hurts…
To conclude, I love Yui. F*ck off Keima (a.k.a, not a bad episode… animation was kinda sub par, however).