Keima’s on the case now that he’s seem the damage that can be wrought.
What They Say:
Keima, a high school student, is an avid player of romantic simulation games. He is known on the Internet as the “Divine Capturer” for his legendary skills to “capture” any 2D girl in games. In his real school life, Keima is considered nothing but a gloomy geek with thick glasses.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The opening episode of the third season of The World God Only Knows had a lot of ground to cover and it was certainly a chaotic episode. As it skipped about a dozen volumes of the manga, give or take, it had to fill in some of the gaps that are related to the story they want to tell here and that left some aspects of it feeling like a bit of an info dump where it was just playing catch-up. It handled it about as well as it could before it got more into the way that Keima and Elsie’s actions have let loose some hidden things within some of those abused by loose souls, which in the end brought a goddess out of Kanon. One that was promptly taken down in the prologue here by the hunter that’s come for them, resulting in an intense sequence for a series of this nature that has now left Kanon in a pretty bad state.
The take down of Kanon is something that has impacted the others as they see the condition she’s in, and realize that it’s only because of the goddess that she’s even still holding on. Amusingly, Tenri has opted to just get the hell out of Dodge at this point and go into hiding so as to not draw any attention, but she does make a few things clear to Keima, including the fact that there are six goddesses that are out there and Keima has a week or so to find the four of them that are currently missing. While Keima in the past has been less than interested in dealing with all of this stuff, he’s taking all of this very seriously from the get go here and is even enlisting Haqua as his “buddy” for the next week to deal with what’s going on. With past experience in mind, he at least makes the smart decision to be proactive on all of this.
Keima’s approach is definitely one that is a bit game oriented, or end game oriented when you get down to it, as he starts to stake out quickly who the potential players will be and what approach to take when going through them to discover where the other goddesses lay. Of course, it becomes amusing as instead of a god of the gaming world, he thinks he needs to play the devil of it instead in order to hunt them down, leading him into a lot of pain. These moments bring us to a lot of familiar characters, especially after having watched the first two seasons again recently, and it’s fun to revisit them even if Keima is trying to discern if there’s something lurking inside of them that will cause trouble. It’s filled with simple moments, but it’s also just good fun and enjoyable to see him working his particular style of approach.
In Summary:
Though the series doesn’t exactly make a big leap here – the most exciting segment really is the prologue – it does shape where the show is going. With Kanon taken down quickly, Tenri running of as fast as she can and some basic information doled out, we get a solid foundation here on top of the catch-up we got in the first episode. And that does give the show a good feeling as it puts Keima on the case in a very proactive way that we usually don’t see from him. The episode goes by in a flash with lots of fun dialogue, some good silliness throughout – often involving Haqua – and a good bit of time with various girls from the first couple of seasons that are getting their nods here as he seeks out who may have a goddess within them. Fun, simple and very enjoyable.
Grade: B+
Streamed By: Crunchyroll
Review Equipment:
Sony KDL70R550A 70″ LED 1080P HDTV, Apple TV via HDMI set to 1080p, Onkyo TX-SR605 Receiver and Panasonic SB-TP20S Multi-Channel Speaker System With 100-Watt Subwoofer.