The World God Only Knows
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is really good at hentai games…
The reason why I was not looking forward to this series is because it’s got a bit of a “dime a dozen”-premise. Last year we saw the cat version of this with Nyan Koi, and that turned out to be really uninspired, so I really wanted to see with my own eyes what this show would end up as. Overall, while I can’t say that I immediately understand why so many people are looking forward to it, I can say that I’m very intrigued, and this episode was much better than I expected. It had quite a bit of creativity in its scenario, and to be honest, the creators did a decent job of getting a girl to fall in love with the male lead. In any case it’s far more plausible than most other harems. What I’m especially interested in is what the heck the rest of this series is going to look like? My main problem is that ghost girl, who feels rather one-sided, but overall, I’m impressed.
OP: I like the visuals here.
Potential: 65%
Motto To Love-Ru
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a typical loser who is loved by about six different girls.
The good news: Motto To Love-Ru is not as bad as Ladies versus Butlers. It at least has something that resembles a narrative and at least the combined intelligence of the cast can be able to outwit a baboon’s backside. The visuals look fairly decent, and especially the far away shots are nicely animated, so at least we don’t get a repeat of that complete disaster here. That’s pretty much where my praises end, though. To Love-Ru still remains a bad harem that is in no way worth watching. Rather than being a show with fanservice in it, it’s a show that is completely built around showing its female cast in awkward romantic situations. It doesn’t make the slightest effort to blend things in naturally, it just throws the cast into a bath house from out of nowhere, and makes the cast bump into each other in the most ridiculous places (a children’s play house? Really?). We’re 26 episodes further, and yet the characters act exactly the same from what I remember from the first season, absolutely no progression seems to have been booked, other than the introduction of a bunch of new characters, who all are simple stereotypical paper bags. What also really bothers me is that Xebec is pretty much outputting the same show twice here this season: both MM and To Love-Ru are harems, both are centred around a high school and both involve beating up the lead character. The biggest difference is that MM focuses more on the beating up and To Love-Ru focuses more on the harem. Really, Xebec: what happened?
OP: A decent J-Pop song. I’ve heard worse.
ED: Again, as bad as the characters are, this one does try to portray them all-right, I guess.
Potential: 0%
You are Umasou
Short Synopsis: Our lead character is a dinosaur.
Umasou is a series with five-minute episodes, aimed at 3-year old kids and animated in what looks like flash. It’s a bit of a weird story about a tyrannosaurus rex who ends up adopting a baby ankylosaurus, and it’s pretty much told in the style of a picture book. It definitely has its charms, and I can see how little kids will love it. For the older audiences, though… yeah. It’s very much like series as Chebrashka Arere and Table Cat: fun to watch for a few minutes, but not really worth it in the long run due to the incredibly simple and childish storylines and characters.
Potential: 10%
By the way: older Japanese only know series like these as “anime”, since the “good stuff” is only shown after 11 pm – and not all Japanese watch TV at this late time of the day. After all, not every TV-station shows Anime at that time.
Many people think, that nearly all Japanese are conscious about the stuff WE like, but that’s not true, not even in Japan…
I was there and I was kinda shocked when I realized this… 🙂
Odd. I’m fairly certain TLR and MM are completely different.
Wait a minute. I read ToLoveru’s manga, and far from being a masterpiece of its own, it was pretty charming and well made. Toloveru is clearly inspired by Takashi’s Urusei Yatsura. The main male lead is quite the difference here. The greatest drawback i spotted in the anime serie was insertion of uninspired anime-only episodes. They weren’t absolutely un-funny thus i even dropped the serie early. As long these oav and next serie use manga material well they will come out pretty decent.
if it follows the manga, kaminomi should get better soon 😀 but i kinda find that the VA for keima doesnt match him.
Kaminomi yay! I wouldn’t call it a harem serie, although yeah… The objective of Keima is to make a girl fall in love with him… But still… Eh… Hard to explain… It’s funny though, and doesn’t need fanservice, sex jokes or anything like that to be enjoyable so that makes it get some point at least for me.
I was expecting your 0% potencial in To-Love-Ru, but still made me smile when I saw it.
It is difficult to classify TWGOK as a harem series. It’s shares aspects of the harem genre but rather than girls trying to get with our main character it’s the other way around. The main issue with this series is that it might become repetitive as it follows a similar formula. I doubt that will happen though. The capture arcs are quite different despite a similar formula.
Oh and just in case this wasn’t cleared up. TWGOK does not mock harems. It actually mocks Visual novels or Galges.
I just noticed that TWGOK runs on Shonen Sunday. That’s a plus, almost all manga that comes from Shonen sunday are awesome. I mean all the Mitsuru Adachi and Rumiko Takashi mangas were published there. And some Osamu Tezuka.
TWGOK is anti harem. He absolutely despises real people.
….and hentai games are different than pure and normal dating sims. He is a hardcore nerd/geek, but he is definetely not a pervert.
Something that is hard to find in harem series nowadays…
As Aidan said, it doesn’t mock harems directly. Yet majority of all galge games have multiple girls ultimately going after the main character. Likewise you’ll see how Keima compares the girls he meets to the girls in his games and uses the cliches to make them fall for him, as part of his contract with Elsee.
It was really entertaining, but then they ruin it by using the horrible cliche of the transfer student, argh…
Anyway, this season is pretty impressive in how it comes up with interesting ideas for overused genres
The format of the manga goes like this: Capturing -> Inbetween -> Capturing. Next week should be the first inbetween episode where Keima explained his BMW Theory to Elci. And we get to meet Keima’s mother.
After watching the TWGOK episode I feel that I particularly enjoyed it. This manga has its funny and relatively serious moments and they actually managed to convey that in the anime. I’m usually disapointed in the anime adaptations of most of the manga I read but it wasn’t the case this time.
Next week will be interesting 🙂
I wasn’t particularly impressed with the first episode of TWGOK. It felt kind of awkward and clumsy, and the characterisation of Elsee felt off.
The “they should have their hair tied up/they should be wearing bloomers” joke in particular I think fell flat because of the delivery/poor timing.
On the other hand, IIRC it took the manga a couple of chapters/arcs to really find its stride and Elsee’s character did change over time, so I’m not going to start shouting RUINED FOREVER just yet ;P
I think I’ve finally turned into one of those anally retentive fans who are compelled to criticise every little thing about an adaption, because I went back and reread the first chapter and found myself comparing the framing, God help me.
Ah well, fuck it, whatever. A few points of interest.
First, the manga starts with Elsee and establishes her ditzy Bunny Ears Lawyer credentials right from the off.
Second, the manga is comedically much denser. I had noticed the anime seemed a bit slow and thin, but I put that down to Ayumi’s arc being the short introductory one and having to be stretched out to fit the full twenty minutes. But no, they’ve actually cut jokes- good, solid jokes.
Third, in the manga Ayumi kisses Keima on purpose, and in the classroom scene afterwards it’s her that speaks to him. Not that that has anything to do with the quality fo the adaption, I just thought it was an interesting choice :p
Basically, I think the anime is trying to play up the drama. Which is problematic because while there are dramatic elements in TWGOK- and they get stronger as the story progresses- it is still primarily a comedy series, and the comedy has been diluted by the shift in tone for no real gain.
Don’t the visuals of the OP of The World God Only Knows seem like a Eden of The East OP rip off?
Am I really going to post a third comment on TWGOK? Apparently, yes, because I was skimming some forums elsewhere and came across this gem:
“I’ve come to this conclusion: the anime makes Keima look too normal. He’s this sort of nerdy guy who retreats into gaming because no one respects him in real life. He’s a slacker who plays games through class without thought to his future. Your average escapist with a big ego who rationalizes his own lifestyle. In this sense, the audience expects to see him grow; they see a pitiful guy getting thrown into a silly situation that should force him to face reality in a humorously clashing way.
In the manga, he’s crazy. When the teachers asks if he finds her lecture boring, he answers by listing the number of games that are more interesting, equal to, or less interesting than her lecture. In his self-introduction, he identifies his best subject as everything, ie: he is the number 1 student in school academically, who doesn’t need to pay attention in class. Basically, he’s an Ubermensch with no shame who could be popular and respected but chooses not to. There’s no implication of weakness on his part, just crazy stubbornness. So you don’t identify with him, you don’t want to see him grow, you just want to see what he can get away with. Because he’s a larger than life Magnificent Bastard.
So small omissions to his characterization change the tone of the story completely.”
Pretty much spot on. I’m going to tie this back to my point about the shift in tone; it seems like the anime team are trying to humanise Keima, turn him from a larger than life fiction character to something more realistic.
OR MAYBE HE’S GOING TO BE FLESHED OUT IN LATER EPISODES AND IT’S FAR TOO SOON TO BE ANALYSING THIS AHAHAHAHAHAHA I NEED TO LIE DOWN
Yeah, the reason the TWGOK Manga is so good is that it isn´t about “the girl of the week”. The core premise is that Keima, the ultranerd that rejects reality has to confront reality.
Thats what the title references, it´s about Keimas version of reality.
Also Elice didn´t introduce herself as transfer student but as Keimas sister – which will become important in the next episode.
Never read the TWGOK manga but my first impression of the anime is that it looks like a social program aimed at those super otakus we read about on japanese otaku blogs who celebrate the birthdays of game characters like the heroines of Love Plus. Here we have one of those otakus, who actually abhors real girls, being forced to tackle them, and actually finding himself becoming more comfortable with dealing with real girls as time goes on. The bit about the “heroine of the week” losing her memory after being “conquered” keeps the protagonist from uncomfortably complicated relationship tangles. Interesting how the ghost girl gets more corporeal with each new “conquest”. Is she going to be the final boss heroine? Hm..wonder how successful it could be getting those real otaku to put aside their game consoles and actually try dealing with real women. Anyway I think I’m looking forward to this one. It feels like Baka to Test to Shoukanju.
if only they can jump to chapter 113 and show his insight about philosophy that make 90% protagonists of anime that psgels watched is actually just a thin as paper and have no deep at all….
I thought I remember hearing that “Umasou da na” was a children’s book, and that there would be a feature film with actual animation in it. I also heard that the film expanded the simple elements and is more emotional.
I am guessing this isn’t related to that film I wanted to watch. D:
The opening of The World God Only Knows…the best opening I’ve ever seen this 2010 😀 heck maybe one of the best there is for me. I can’t wait for the opening to be released in full.
My first impression about TWOGK is so negative. So, it’s another similar harem with a very hateful lead male this time. It should mock dating sims, but it turned out really un-funny