What They Say:
The goddess search is going well, but the strain is too much for Keima and he falls ill. However, this is an opportunity the God of Conquest to trigger the sick visit event. Ayumi and Chihiro are the remaining candidates for the final goddess. However, Keima doesn’t realize how difficult it is to conquer two friends at the same time.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
After the absolute fun and charm of Shiori, and the blast that was watching Keima crossdressing in order to achieve the kind of ending he wanted, The World God Only Knows certainly has the expectation of not being quite as good following all of that. Which means that the episode can definitely surprise more than one might think as expectations are duly lowered after having such a strong episode. So what better way to work the storyline than to try and do something a bit different than the norm of having Keima going off to find the goddesses and their carriers and dealing with it than having him fall ill and allowing the potential goddesses come to him instead. It’s not exactly planned of course, but Keima is one to always try and take advantage of a situation.
Amusingly, he gets visited by Ryo who is just going to torment him a bit, but things go from bad to worse for Keima when he calls Ayumi to let her know that he’s not making it to school, which is rare for him. The pathetic way he sounds on the phone gets her instincts firing on all cylinders and you can see the resolute nature on her face with what she’s going to do. When he does the same with Chihiro in order to get her to visit as well so he can see if she’s caught up in all of this, it’s just massaging the situation so that the girls don’t show up at the same time after school since that would be a bit of a disaster. Seeing how both girls avoid telling the other what’s going on and come up with ways to deal with getting out of after school situations is just the icing on the cake. And having Ryo serve as the watch outside for it is extra special icing.
When the girls show up at his place, he definitely has staged things well even considering how sick he is, and when it comes to Ayumi he definitely creates an atmosphere that allows him to gain her sympathies. It does got in a real awkward way as it goes on and Chihiro shows up as he’s all groggily aggressive with Ayumi in order to hide her, not that she realizes it at first, but it helps in the end to keep the two apart. There’s a lot of fun in how he keeps the two apart and the kinds of things that go on, from Chihiro’s singing to reach his heart and Ayumi all snuggled up with him, that in the end has Ayumi confronting Chihiro about it so she can be sure what the playing field is like. It’s a really well done piece overall between the various interactions that eventually brings everything to a head.
In Summary:
With a different play at hand by having Keima sick and attempting to double up on figuring out what’s going on with the goddesses, we get a very fun episode here as he works through dealing with both Ayumi and Chihiro. It’s set to roll into the next episode as well, which allows this one to breathe more than it might have if it was done as a single episode. Though there are slow parts, they definitely work to the story’s advantage and just getting him to deal with the two girls in such comical ways while certainly not being anywhere near his best is just a treat to watch. Chihiro has some of the better tonal moments, but Ayumi’s embarrassment, humor and awkwardness won me over a lot more and made me enjoy her all the more.
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.
