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)
Keima’s proactive approach to dealing with the goddesses has certainly been fun to watch once he got the understanding about them and how they can totally mess with the girls that he’s already saved. While he’s been kind of indifferent at best at times when it comes to Elsie’s mission that he’s been bonded to, something about what these girls are going through with the goddesses after seeing what happened to Kanon has made him very aggressive in dealing with it. Of course, some of it is just basic dating sim type approach things, which we see at the start where he goes on about how the first blow to be launched against them will be just walking home from school with them. He’s just so into it that you have to enjoy him being this way practically out of the gate.
Of course, as Keima puts his first plan into motion to deal with the girls, it just goes comically wrong for him one after another. In fact, it shifts things up a bit from some of the norms of the series in that it’s quite a bit of slapstick, and that works pretty well as we see Keima get messed up multiple times. Some of the game aspects figure into it as well, such as when he goes to meet up with Ayumi, Miyako ends up coming along and that just complicates his plans even further. To make matters worse, as he’s tried to organize things, Haqua ends up causing enough problems along the way as well simply by showing up while she pretends to be Elsie. Watching his frustration over it all while trying to figure out how to fix it all so the plan can get back on track is just good, simple fun.
Keima also gets involved in trying to get closer again to Shiori, but that just turns into a reallyhilarious situation when he reads a story that she’ written, which is drawn in the most simplistic of ways, and it hits a lot of great little bits as he can’t believe what he’s reading and she’s just freaked out that he’s even reading it. As he goes on and on across the girls, it’s definitely fun to watch how it unfolds since nothing goes right and just too many things go wrong as he does his best. Keima’s attempts at getting this new “game” going on his terms has gone anything but that, and while we’ve seen him struggle with problems before when dealing with the individual girls in previous seasons, seeing him strike out across so many of them here within the space of a single episode is just an overdose of fun.
In Summary:
As the season gets moving more with a very proactive Keima, it’s just a whole lot of fun. With his situation not going as smoothly as it could be and even the emotions of various targets turning more negative and towards hate, it just makes the situation even harder to deal with and draws it out further than it should be. Especially when there’s so much at stake when it comes to the girls and their lives. Working with Haqua is certainly proving to be a bit easier than working with Elsie in some ways, but she’s problematic in her own ways and the show throws a few more things into the mix along the way as well, including a hilarious appearance by Nora towards the end as she slaps them both around to get things back on track. The season is off to a good start still and is definitely hitting all the right marks.
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.
