With the number of Loose Souls revealed, Keima’s reaction is entirely appropriate.
What They Say:
One gloomy Monday morning, Keima’s sour mood is exacerbated by harsh words from Chihiro. Keima doesn’t give a damn about the real world, but her words still leave him a little depressed. However, he brushes them off as the ramblings of a background character…but then they discover that she’s been possessed by a loose soul! And Chihiro’s parameters are the worst Keima’s seen so far… Keima is beaten down by the ordinary girl who exemplifies the real girl. That is when a certain someone appears before him—!?
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Not surprisingly, one of the areas avoided in the first season and for a few episodes here is just how many Loose Souls are out there to be collected by the demons and those that they bring on to help them with. With Elsie having recovered five of them herself and Haqua making a save of her own in the previous arc, Keima’s actually fairly hopeful that they could be halfway done by now and he can be rid of that binding collar around his neck. So when Elsi reveals that there are sixty thousand Loose Souls out there, you can easily feel the weight that crushes against Keima since this is a hunt that would go on for dozens upon dozens of lifetimes before it could be properly done, even with other demons out there hunting them up.
With that as the background, Keima’s depression is pretty profound and when Elsie asks his classmate Chihiro to help out, flatly refuses since she doesn’t want to catch his “dweeb cooties” as she puts it. She’s pretty harsh on him, which isn’t a surprise as he’s definitely not your average kid and easy for others to deride, but it just compounds the way he feels and makes it all worse. For better or worse though, he and Elsie discover that she has a Loose Soul possessing her which has made things worse for her, and that starts them down the path of trying to figure out how to deal with the situation. While we’ve had moody pieces before, this one feels even more so as the skies are overcast for much of it and the sound of rain continues to make it a very dark piece when combined with the piano music used to accent it. Keima’s darkened personality is just the icing on the cake with it all.
It’s a real struggle for him to get anywhere near enthused for helping her, so much so that he’s pretty tone deaf to the whole thing for a good part of this episode even as Elsie does her best to get him to help. His time is spent heavily in his games, but even there he’s getting urging in a roundabout way as he relates the game to his own experience with Chihiro and hears that as a way to prodding him to action. Keima takes so many hits in this episode, far more than any other in the series so far I think, that it’s almost brutal as it’s visualized as attacks against him. He’s a difficult character in a lot of ways because of his personality and focus on the games, but it’s been rare for him to be called out so blatantly and for him to take it so personally. But with all that’s been revealed to him at this point, it’s not a huge surprise as he really does feel like a teenager who now has the whole world against him.
In Summary:
The World God Only Knows has a pretty strong episode here that’s a lot of fun and really lets Keima take the center stage, something that really hasn’t happened in a significant way throughout its run so far. There’s some really good comedic moments, from the Snoopy reference to the way Keima gets so vocal and blatant with how frustrated he is, that we’re able to laugh but still relate well enough because of the serious side that is in there. The show has some great mood setting moments and the overall darkened tone is welcome as Keima works through his problems, or rather pushes them so far down that they don’t exist anymore. Considering the situation that he’s in, it’s something that you can get a handle on easily enough and relate to in a larger sense. With so much of the episodes focusing on the girl of the story, giving Keima some time to be dealt with is welcome and well executed.
Grade:
Simulcast By: Crunchyroll
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.
