Kami-Sama no Memo-Chou will be the fourth series I’m going to blog this series. After Penguin Drum, it had the best first episode of the new season, but then again it did get extra time to prove itself. I was a bit worried about it because the episodes afterwards were slated for just 25 minutes, but there is no need to worry: this episode ended with a cliff-hanger, so episode length isn’t going to be the issue.
In any case, the reason I chose this over some of the other new series this season: the dialogue. The script of this is huge, and is amongst the best of the season. JC Staff are really a studio with their ups and downs, and especially Hidan no Aria and Twin Angel were worse than I ever could have imagined, but in comparison, Kami-Sama no Memo-Chou was really surprisingly solid. I’m not sure whether it’s ever going to go to a continuous story, but that doesn’t matter, really: it’s good enough with its individual stories.
I was really looking forward to this one because it pretty much reunites the anime creators of Asatte no Houkou, a wonderful coming of age drama, but even considering that this is completely different in style. The acting is very good, and especially Alice when she’s on a roll is very interesting to watch. The cat is full of colourful characters, and each episode has plenty of interesting and imaginative twists. It focuses just as much on its story as its characters, and that works out really well so far.
The worst part of this show is that it’s giving me Index II flashbacks, because it has the exact same fanservice scenes (only not as numerous): completely out of nowhere the main character is put into a situation where he sees one of the girls naked, it completely breaks the flow and afterwards it’s never mentioned again aside for one snide remark. That’s really the type of fanservice that I hate, because it serves no point or purpose other than being annoying. It feels slapped onto the series at the last minute by some higher-ups. It got really bad in Index II, but that was because it was only magnifying a lot of other issues I had with it. With Memo-Chou so far, it’s just the only flaw so far. If it can keep up this pace, it’ll only end up as a mild annoyance, I hope.
Whether this arc was as good as the first though, we’re going to have to wait until the next episode for that. This again was all of the necessary build-up, but the previous episode also only really fired off with its second half. It was pretty interesting though, and the yakuza have promise as long as they’re not portrayed too stereotypical too often. That big Yakuza was a nice start, though.
Rating: * (Good)
@psgels
Where did you watch it with english sub? I couldn’t find it
psgels often watches raw.
I was wondering that same thing- not even crunchy has it(because it’s one of the shows they’re not doing). Just how much japanese does psgels know?
Totally agree with psgels, the fanservice here feels tacked-on and annoying and doesn’t fit with the series tone and mood at all (that cheap scene in the end of the 1st ep came out of nowhere and tarnished the cool Hikkikomori detective aura of Alice) XD
meh
This is the only show I follow this summer season, not counting the ongoing Steins;Gate. My initial hopes, set fairly high due to the first episode, are starting to decline into apathy territory… đ
Well, it’s not the fanservice alone that I find annoying. Alice is extremely annoying with her attitude despite not knowing anything of the world. Meo is annoying with her naive and overly good attitude. The amazing amount of filler scenes is annoying. And the usage of the worst clichĂ© possible is annoying (calling someone you shouldn’t call). So fanservice is not the only problem of this episode, that’s for sure. I hope the next episode will finally deliver some quality, otherwise I’ll drop this series.
More worrying than the fan-service is the script as a whole; Alice giving out of place exaggerated speeches, the classmate running away at the end (suddenly she can’t confront the MC or console the hurt girl) and specially the main character, he spent the episode defending the motivations of Meo and then he decides to deny them out of nowhere. I liked the last episode so I still have high hopes for this series, let’s wait and see.
oddly i find the uselessness of the male protagonist more annoying than the flashbacks. it’s like looking at kujo all over again, only except being excessively stupid and useless, dude’s so normal that he doesn’t even compare to the rest of the characters. It’s like having a tag along character, which drags the rest of the story down, with his best excuse for tagging along being that he’s “the assistant” only thing is that the assistant doesnt really do much.