A new demon arrives that knows Elsie, but will it spell doom for the series or can it help raise it?
What They Say:
The sudden arrival of the second demon, Haqua! A very talented demon who’s apparently Elsie’s former classmate and a member of the Loose Souls team, as well as the section chief for this district. Elsie is thrilled to be reunited with her fellow demon, but Keima pays no attention as he is focused on his gaming. However, Haqua becomes visibly upset when the topic of capturing loose souls is brought up… That’s when Dokuro sends out an emergency alert! The truth behind loose souls is finally revealed…!?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
With the storyline from the first two episodes wrapped up, and a storyline that I really enjoyed, The World God Only Knows walks that dangerous path for the viewer where you don’t know what’s coming next. It could be a character and situation that’s not all that appealing, which happened in the first season, and that could drive the enjoyment down. There’s a lot of fun to be had even in those episodes with Keima and Elsie, but when you don’t connect with the girl in question, it reduces the overall enjoyment. So what do they do here? They introduce a new demon like Elsie that’s come to Earth to visit her friend.
Haqua’s an interesting character since she comes across as that well to do classmate that learned alongside Elsie who is likely to be better than her in every way. When she gets a look at Keima and his odd personality, it doesn’t help the impression at all. When Elsie talks about how poorly she’s doing, capturing only five Loose Souls, Haqua is shocked that she’s caught that many and comes across as impressed and angry that someone she felt was a friend, an inferior one at that, managed to do better than her. Elsie’s confusion in the midst of it all is amusing to watch and it’s a nice little twist on how it usually goes with Elsie desperately trying to get Haqua’s approval since she’s such a superior type with all the right connections and moves.
There’s more than meets the eye elsewhere as well as Haqua isn’t in the area just to socialize, but rather to track down a Loose Soul that got loose because of her. She’s hiding that fact from Elsie, but it’s Keima that figures it out, and quickly, which leads to the two of them working together for the moment while distracting Elsie so she doesn’t know. There’s actually a pretty good rhythm between Haqua and Keima as they finally start working together though, enough so that you’d think they could carry the series easily, albeit with a more serious tone to it and a different kind of humor. While the Loose Soul aspect is fairly predictable, what makes the episode work is the way the characters interact with each other. Haqua brings something different to the table from what we’ve seen with Elsie, but she’s not the usual stereotype either and that goes a long way towards making a predictable episode a whole lot more fun.
In Summary:
One of the things that I liked about the first season of the series is that it did indeed avoid dropping an innumerable amount of fellow demons down around Keima. It focused just on Elsie alongside Keima and that let it develop the individual girls that became the focus of each arc. The arrival of Haqua can certainly be met with a little bit of caution, but the show has largely earned the benefit of the doubt at this point with what it wants to do, even with some of the small missteps. Haqua proves to be an interesting addition to the series and with her partnering with Keima for the bulk of the episode, it has a few really well done plot points and angles used in order to avoid the usual predictabilities. And with this just being the start of using her, Haqua looks to give The World God Only Knows a pretty interesting arc to work off of.
Review Equipment:
Sony KDS-R70XBR2 70″ LCoS 1080P HDTV, Dell 10.1 Netbook via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.
Grade: B+
Simulcast By: Crunchyroll
