eschumm - 2016-10-08 01:54:13

A very good anime for comedy and romance genres. I love the characters and the design of them, too.

beulah68 - 2016-01-10 14:30:41

"Reality is just a shitty game". 

Keima Katsuragi is a self proclaimed "Capturing God" that can make any girl fall in love with him, if it is in a dating sim. Katsuragi has no love for reality instead opting to live in the world of ideals that the game world creates. One day he gets a email challenging him to prove is skill. He accepts that challenge and has to now make real girl falll in love with him. His partner is Elsie, a incompetent devil from new hell, and together they must drive out the spirits residing in girls hearts with the power of love. 

The show is a comedy and focuses on how Katsuragi is trying to capture real girls using game logic. It has many different kinds of humour. From parodying the dating game mechanics, situational comedy and inherently funny characters it creates a great blend that makes for a funny ride. 

The art is good. The artstyle changes depending on certain situations and what emotion is trying to be conveyed. And the base artstyle also fits the anime and it has  very high animation quality. 

The opening was one of the best I have heard and was very memorable. The overall sound and music quality was high and managed to enhance the mood very well. The voice actors did a great job and especially Katsuragis voice actor managed to really convey his personality. 

Katsuragi and Elsie is the two main characters in the first season of the show and they are both entertaining to watch. Katsuragi as a character has his ideals and never backs down from defending them loudly declaring "real life sucks" or "2d is better than 3d". He is also willing to do anything to accomplish his plans overcoming any sense if embarrasment. Elsie on the other hand takes up the character of the kawaii little sister always trying to help but accidentally failing. The girls that Katsuragi has to conquer all embodies a archetype, sporty, rich, quiet, etc, but still manages to have some unique twist to them making the outcome harder to predict than in the games Katsuragi treasures so much. 

The World God Only Knows got 3 seasons and some specials and ova making up around 40episodes of content. The show has some filler but is very enjoyable overall. If you want more after finishing the anime I can also recommend the manga of around 260chapters which is a pretty good read. 

jaclyn.jaskolski - 2015-04-20 01:46:51

TWGOK is a parody at heart, but it manages to keep a story that not only is well developed, but the characters show growth and truly care for each other. I would recommend this to anyone that is tired of stereotypical harems and wants something different. 

kristopher95 - 2014-12-25 18:59:56

A guy who’s obsessed with dating simulator games is forced to seduce real girls by a demonic contract.

Why do I keep being surprised when MyAnimeList gives me another shit recommendation? I saw the 8’s and 9’s (even some 10's); I saw the 5-stars; and I read the reviews telling me it was funny—that it’s not your typical harem show.

I love a good story that parodies, deconstructs, or puts a twist on clichés. And this show sort of, kinda does that? But not really because so much of it falls flat. The premise is actually much better suited for a more serious story.

The show starts funny so I had hopes. I expected to get funnier and wittier, but it actually got more and more dull. It became tedious after halfway through. When a show gets boring I switch over to the dub because I can’t stand being forced to read subtitles for a shit show. It’s a chore. The dub actually made it funnier and more bearable.

I wish I had a demon girl to shove weird things into my mouth.

The story has a different girl every few episodes for our main guy to seduce, but the girls are so one-dimensional. It makes no sense when the show’s premise is supposed to be an attack on clichés. The girls are supposed to represent typical female archetypes in dating sims, but there weren’t any twists or anything unexpected about them. It was played straight.

The main character doesn't even seduce them in a clever or interesting way either. It just happens without any real struggle or conflict so you're left with the girls' stories to support the plotting.

The only character I liked was Elsie, the female sidekick. She was ditzy, funny, and made the show tolerable. She carried half the show for me. Elsie actually cared about the demon contract. She cared about trying to seduce the girls (because her life depended on it).

I wished for a lot more of her because the main character was so uninteresting. I couldn’t relate to him. He was bland and just didn’t seem to care that if he didn’t fulfill his demonic contract he’d die.

The premise deserved a better story than this. Here’s how it could’ve been much more engaging.

• - Take it more seriously.
• - Should’ve been a character drama that focused on his growth as a person.
• - He’d mature, realizing he shouldn’t have such an unhealthy obsession over dating simulators.
• - He’d be forced to interact with real women and find out that real human interaction is far more difficult than a video game.
• - You’d see him struggle, you’d see him learn, and you’d see him develop.
• - It can still be funny. The 40-Year Old Virgin is somewhat like this. It still had great characters and a character arc while remaining funny.

I’m not going to bother with season 2. The show was amusing (at first), but it's not worth sitting through 12 episodes for.

When a show becomes a chore to watch.

robbie.von - 2014-10-02 23:13:52

Prologue:

“The source of every crime is some defect of the understanding; or some error in reasoning; or some sudden force of the passions. A defect in the understanding is ignorance; in reasoning, erroneous opinion.” that is a quote from Thomas Hobbes’ Leviathan which is a thoughtful book about government and the monarchy. What? How does that relate to The World God Only Knows? Nothing! That is correct The World God Only Knows or TWGOK is not the most philosophical series out there but is quite an enjoyable comedy.

History:

The World God Only Knows is a series originally illustrated and written by Tamiki Wakaki. Wakaki who is a Japanese mangaka from Osaka graduated from Kyoto University. He submitted his first one shot in1993 where he achieved the ‘Shogakukan Comics Award.’ Unfortunately, after several failed one-shots he returned to his home of Osaka and became a NEET.

He worked under Takemura Yuuji (Gifuu Doudou!! Naoe Kanetsugu - Maeda Keiji) as an assistant and had submitted several more one-shots hoping to get serialized, all of which never able to go into full serialization. His first serialized manga series was “Holy Crystal Albatross” which was serialized in Weekly Shounen Sunday Magazine back in 2006. Unfortunately, even though the series ran for around a year it ultimately was canceled for being an accidental-serialization. Wakaki ended up giving a short blogpost after the unexpected cancellation of the series allowing him to inform his fans of the future plot points and foreshadowing he had planned at the time. Later that year in 2007 he was able to get a little one-shot known as “Koishite!? Kami-sama!!” that would later become The World God Only Knows into serialization.

The manga would continue to be relatively successful and receive an anime adaptation by Manglobe in 2010, the same studio behind Ergo Proxy. The series would be directed by Shigehito Takayanagi who previously worked on Cardcaptor Sakura, Shin Megami Tensei: Devil Children and Galaxy Angel. The script would be penned by Hideyuki Kurata who has scripted projects such as Excel Saga, Bamboo Blade and the upcoming Fall 2014 series Le Fruit de la Grisaia, with character designs being handled by Akio Watanabe (Monogatari Series and Magical Canan). The music composition would be handled by Hayato Matsuo who has composed for works such as Hellsing Ultimate and JoJo’s Bizarre Adventure (2012), he also worked on the orchestrations for Shenmue. The anime’s first season would see release on October 6, 2010, and would see completion on December 22, 2010.

Plot and Characters:

The series follows highschool student Keima Katsuragi, an Otaku who is known around the cyberspace as the God of Conquest. What does he conquer? Well, the hearts of young maidens. One day this God makes a deal with a demon and is now roped into retrieving Loose Souls from the hearts of young girls with
the assistance of his buddy Elucia de Lute Ima, or just Elsie to her friends. How would Keima be able to do this? By making the girls fall in love with him of course, filling their hearts with love and forcing out the Loose Soul. There is one problem. Keima is the God of Conquest of 2D girls mainly those in Visual Novels or Dating Sims. (VNs and Dating Sims are games like Clannad, Majikoi and Muv Luv). Well, what would any sane person do but not try to back out of the deal as soon as it is made? Unfortunately for Keima he cannot. See the Buddy or Demon tries to leave or break the deal, they lose their head.

That is the general premise of the series Keima finds a girl with a loose soul and applies gaming logic to make them fall in love with him. Then presto Elsie catches the Loose Soul, now here is the catch after the Loose Soul leaves the girl’s, heart she forgets her entire relationship with Keima at the point where he starts romancing her. This allows Keima to pursue the girls without having to face the wrath of those girls he has already conquered. 

The shows best asset as it keeps the tone light and without forced love triangle melodrama. The downside this does force out characters that you just spent 1-3 episodes on growing attached to, though this also allows you to become attached to new characters and if there was a previous heroine you did not practically enjoy you will not see her again when her arc is done. The only characters that really receive development is our two leads, Keima and Elsie. 

 Keima is an Otaku, but he is a shut in and spends every waking hour on his games and though this can be seen as a negative aspect to other characters personality for Keima it works. See TWGOK is a parody of the harem genre and as such Keima is allowed to explain the tropes of those games and shows to Elsie whois our audience stand in. When we see his logic applied the humor comes from that, seeing it work or fail, but always reassured that Keima has a plan. That and if you are a partaker of VNs and Dating Sims you see the inside jokes and references, and there are a ton of them. Keima goes through some development this season, not much but seeing him adjust to his situation is quite enjoyable, that and his interactions with Elsie is quite amusing.

Elise also goes through similar development having to get used to Keima and his unique personality and getting him to accept her. Our Heroines this season are Ayumi, Mio, Kanon and Shiori. Each one of these characters represents a certain anime archetype, and this may sound boring and predictable, the anime can put a good spin on each character, and you will enjoy them for the most part. Ayumi, for example, seems like a natural hyperactive, confident athlete. But we see that she is insecure and uses her hyperactive tendency to hide this fact which allows us to understand her better has a character. This season no heroine becomes a reoccurring character, so you will not get too attached to them, so while the ride is amusing while it lasts, don’t get too attached.

Music and Sound Design:

The sound design for TWGOK is by far some of its best aspects; it used comically over the top sound bites to get the shows abundant personality across a negative it is a little unoriginal, it is used effectively, but it becomes just background noise real fast. The OST, on the other hand, is top-notch sound quality. The OST is fantastic as you would expect from Hayato Matsuo’s extensive resume of quality. This soundtrack may not be the best of his career, but I love how each song sounds like it was ripped from a visual novel while also having a higher quality sound that just adds to the experience. 

The opening “God Only Knows” is not just a j-pop or j-rock song the studio got to help promote the anime, it was all song and composed in house by a band specially made for the anime “Oratorio The World God Only Knows.” Oratorio is a word meaning a large musical composition for orchestra, choir, and soloists. It is almost like a opera, which is perfect to describe the opening because the full song is several segments and can run up to nine minutes in length for the full track. The ending theme “Koi no Shirushi” by Kami Nomi zo Shiru-tai, is a track made for each heroine of the series to sing a part and is a song by the series VA.The ending theme is bit weak, but that is no big deal since the rest of this series composition is top notch.

Sub vs. Dub.

The first time I have been able to do one of these in a long time and unfortunately no matter how much I love some of
the English actors namely Chris Patton and Luci Christian who have both shown great chops in series like Full Metal Panic, here… bad direction and bad casting. Chris gives his all as Keima and Luci as Elsie, but the rest of the cast is super weak. Nothing against them and if you have to watch it dubbed you will not want to stab your ears. However, the Japanese cast just sounds better and more natural, Hiro Shimono and Kanae Itou just sound a bit more in line with their characters and the secondary cast is much stronger in the Japanese dub.

You have Ayana Taketatsu who is much better cast as Ayumi then Kaytha Coker who gives a flat performance, and it is mostly like that for the rest of the cast. With a few notable exceptions namely being Brittney Karbowski as Kanon who can get across her performance naturally but Nao Toyama is still the better Kanon.

Art Design and Animation.
The animation for TWGOK is very well done, it is exceedingly detailed and very vibrant and colorful. Akio Watanabe was once again given very solid character designs that give the original manga designs a new feeling while still being TWGOK; they are now more angular and proportional. That and the direction is top notch with solid scene flow and well-structured acts.

Overall the animation is also very smooth and not all that choppy and a real solid effort by the Manglobe. You will also notice tons of references to their other works and certain visual novel series and fun little nods to game console companies the most obvious being the PFP being an homage to Sony’s PSP.

Epilogue: 

Overall the first season of The World God Only Knows is a great first outing and a fun parody of your average harem anime. Though it is a bit episodic and the lack reoccurring heroines does hurt the series but does keep things fresh. The World God Only Knows, is a fun ride for any viewer. I give it an 8/10 and a recommendation to own it on DVD or Blu-Ray.

Pros
+ A Fun Parody
+ Likable Characters
+ A Fantastic OST + Vibrant Visuals and A Great Japanese Dub
+ MC Owns the Series

Cons
- A Weak English Dub
- Lack of Reoccurring Female Characters
- A bit Too Episodic at times Lacking an Overall Serialized Narrative.
- If You Have Never Played a VN You Might Not bein on The Joke

Where can I watch or purchase The World God Only Knows? You can buy the series over on Amazon or Rightstuff

Can I legally stream it anywhere? Yes, you can find it on Crunchyroll free legal streams.

For those who enjoyed The World God Only Knows check out either
Date A Live (2013, AICPLUS+)
The Melancholy of Haruhi Suzumiya (2006, Kyoto Animation)

cullrich - 2013-12-02 19:45:19

I rarely see anime satires, which is a crying shame. Most anime comedies are things along the lines of Nichijou, which are absolutely hysterical, but are highly reliant on slapstick to get their audience to laugh. The rarity of satires is even more disappointing in anime because there are so many things that you can satirize beautifully in anime. For example, an older classic, Bobobo Bo Bobobo took the positively ridiculous nature of shonen anime and mercilessly mocked the techniques, the silly bosses, the whole Dragonball Z-esque nature of it. The show isn't a perfect one, some of the jokes are straight up bad, but they mock the genre better than any other. Because of anime's tendency to lean for a deconstruction of a genre over a satire, we tend to see very few great satires. Fortunately though, we get to see a great example of a satire, in Manglobe's The World God Only Knows. Let's jump in!

Keima Katsuragi is the textbook Otaku. He is antisocial to an insane fault, he seems to be interested in little other than games, and the only person who he wants to have contact with on a regular basis is his mother. Keima, however, is incredible at doing one thing: Picking out the perfect choices in every visual novel he's ever played. In fact, never in the history of his affair with VNs has he made a single bad choice, creating a website solely dedicated to this. Calling himself "God of Conquest," he directs other people to VN success. One day, he recieves a mysterious email, asking him to form a contract to conquer girls. Seeing this as a challenge, Keima gladly accepts, not knowing that he is currently signed into a demonic contract. As soon as he hits ok, a demon named Elsie appears in his room, telling him that he is now a servant of hell, whose sole goal is to conquer the loose souls inside of people. She mistakenly thought all of his bragging about game worlds was real conquests of real women. Keima demands out, but of course that can't happen until he frees all the loose souls in Japan. To ensure he does his job, a collar is attached around his neck, which will kill him if he fails to capture the loose souls. The show, from this point, goes through a lot of romance arcs, where Keima will meet a girl, will woo her with his VN learned romance skills, and soon after, frees the loose soul from her. The plot in itself is very simple, with the premise simply being a reason for Keima as a character to leave his bubble, although I'd be remiss to say that it wasn't a positively adorable way they did it. That being said, this show isn't as much about story as it is about characters, so Story gets a solid 7/10

The characters of TWGOK are very interesting, as while most of them are generally simple archetypes, the way they are executed is absolutely beautiful, hysterical, and enjoyable to say the least. Let's start with Keima. Our protagonist is the dork to end all dorks, carrying around five our six PFPs(nice copyright dodge Japan) at a time to ensure he can constantly play his games. He loves his games. His life is all about fucking games. And at first, that's all you think is important about him. The truth is, he REALLY is all about games, which makes him incredibly empathetic, and understanding about the unique problems each of the girls faces. His obsession with games is comical, and it's the beginning of the real satirization of these kinds of romance shows. Next, we have Elsie, our hyper-kawaii(and I use that word sarcastically) Little sister character. Elsie is fucking stupid to say the least. She knows next to nothing about most people, the earth, and the world around her. She constantly destroys the school, the house, and other places with her cooking, rarely helps Keima with his conquests, and is a general nuisance to him. But my god do I love her. She gives the show a really good balance, providing a lot of positive emotions to contrast Keima's nearly emotionaless character. She tries insanely hard to make Keima and her real world friends, reading a few hundred books to try and learn about the real world. Those books happen to be about Fire trucks, but the effort is what counts, right? Finaly, we have our Ladies. The four main characters of season one fit into easy little stereotypes: The Runner, The Rich Girl, The Idol, and The Bookworm. The girls are great examples of their sterotype, each suffering from a different social anxiety. For example, our Idol, Kanon, is terrified that people aren't going to recognize her, despite being a famous star. Shiori, the bookworm, is afraid of losing everything she loves when the library gets a new media room. Mio, is afraid of not being rich(Terrible I know), and Ayumi, the runner, is afraid she's not good enough to run. These girls are well developed and interesting to listen to, but they're still nothing new, and just extensions of archetypes. I shouldn't take points off for that, but after watching season two(Which gets its own review, as does S3), I can't give TWGOK anything more than a 8/10 for Characters.

The animation for The World God Only Knows was done by the wonderful Studio Manglobe, responsible for such works as Deadman Wonderland, Ergo Proxy, and Samurai Champloo. Manglobe is quickly becoming one of my favorite studios, as when they do good work, they really hit it out of the ballpark. The World God Only Knows is bright and beautiful, with some awesome character designs and some beautiful colors. God the colors in this show. My god, the amount of pink they use in this show is astoundingly beautiful and natural. The designs are equally good, with varying facial structures for the varying girls, giving each of them unique features for their personality traits, however subtle those features may be. I love me a bit of Manglobe, and if you're familiar with their work, TWGOK has that same level of quality. Animation gets a 9/10

The soundtrack of TWGOK is, much like the show it was made for, very cliched and simple. That doesn't mean it's bad at all, because the soundtrack is actually quite good. It's happiness, sunshine and daisies, which is just enjoyable. There's little more I could really think of wanting out of a soundtrack like it, so I'm glad I got the bare minimum. Hayato Matsuo gets a +1 for decent soundtracks. Now, in terms of Sub vs Dub, I'd go with sub, because I think the japanese actors get a better feeling for their characters better. Also, because no matter how good the english voice actors are, I know well and good that they can't match this:

Positively Adorable and Hysterical. This show was really not made to be dubbed, sadly for us. Now the opening is another matter altogether. The visuals are absolutely phenomenal, with some great shifts between vectors, original animation, and even a spot of 3D. Put that to an awesome musical track, and you're down like the sickness. This show has a good soundtrack, a semi-subpar dub, and an amaaaaaaaaaazing opening. Sound gets an 8/10

The Biggest flaw I could see with this show is that it focuses insanely on Visual Novels, which, to most westerners, is far different than the average romance anime. However, I would disagree. Given that most romance anime, with the exception of a few, are based off of Visual Novels, and even those that aren't share a lot of characteristics with their VN counterparts. And in all honesty, does it even matter? The satirical nature of the show rides on the fact that the characters are cut outs, the main character is a dork, and the world is apparently very predictable. Which are all things that any anime fan can understand. The World God Only Knows was a pleasure to watch, and was more than enjoyable for me.

FINAL VERDICT:

THE WORLD GOD ONLY KNOWS GETS AN 8.25/10

angeline02 - 2013-10-21 23:58:25

Quick note, considering that there aren't many differences or changes between either of the first two seasons in any category, and it'd be kind of pointless to do two separate reviews that say the exact same thing, this review with be covering the first two seasons of The World God Only Knows. There will however be a separate review for the third season at some point in the future. Now that that's out of the way, please enjoy the review.

You know, i'm pretty sure that i'd be hard pressed to find many anime fans that aren't also gamers, at least to some degree. After all, the two cultures have always blended well in the past. But right now i want to talk about a specific type of game, visual novels. Visual novels are a type of video game that are basically interactive stories, you play through listening to the story unfold and occasionally you make choices that decide how the story will play out. There are some that are popular on an international level such as the Shin Megami Tensei franchise and Ace Attorney: Phoenix Wright, but it's only in Japan where visual novels have a strong popularity and a wide variety of games taking up the market. So the idea of making an anime/manga series where the concepts of visual novels are a large part of the story and characters doesn't exactly seem so farfetched. In comes The World God Only Knows, which implements the idea of these games into the harem genre to make an anime that has spawned quite a popularity since it's debut. But does it follow the plan that leads us to a happy ending or a dead end?

Story (6/10)

The story is about a teenage boy named Keima Katsuragi who is obsessed with games, specifically visual novels of the dating sim variety. He has the uncanny ability to be able to capture the hearts of every girl in his games with ease earning him the title of God of Conquest. One day, however, he receives a strange email asking if he can truly capture the heart of any girl he chooses. Keima, considering it a challenge, replies yes, accepting the challenge, when all of a sudden a young girl named Elucia de Lute Ima, Elsie for short, appears out of thin air claiming that she is a demon from hell and that he has just signed a contract with her. The contract states that he will be her partner in capturing the loose souls that have escaped from hell and have found host bodies in other people, primarily women, and if he refuses to do so then he will lose his head, literally, and Elsie, being bonded with him, will also die. So now Keima has to use his extensive knowledge of dating sims to make these girls fall in love with him, to fill the emptiness in their hearts and kick the invading soul out. And that's basically it for the first two seasons, Keima and Elsie find a girl who's carrying a loose soul, Keima seduces her, they kiss, the loose soul is captured, and through the element of plot convenience, the girl forgets all about the conquest so Keima can move on to the next girl without being considered an adulterous asshole. Throw in a couple filler episodes and that's it. Still, despite it's formulaic and repetitive nature, it's actually quite entertaining. The different heroine arcs are well executed, the humor is always silly, and i was never bored with the show. And i think one thing that makes it all work is that the show is in fact, a parody of visual novels. It kind of pokes fun at just how predictable and unrealistic they can be, but it's never mean spirited, always choosing silly humor over scathing criticism, which makes the show very lovable. However it does bring up some questions. How did Keima get tricked into the contract when he never signed a contract, he just pressed a button on an email? That's not exactly something that would hold up in court hell or otherwise. Also while the girls do lose all their memories, it's kind of hard to not say that Keima is cheating on them when he never actually breaks up with anyone. And it's hard not to say that the show isn't just a bit hypocritical when it says, more than once mind you, that reality and fiction are two separate things, yet Keima always succeeds in seducing women with what he's learned from his games, things that would never really help in the real world. Honestly it's best to not try to use your mind to much during the show, or else you'll be wondering why your laughing at an antisocial teenage boy manipulating women into falling in love with him, only to make out with him, force them to forget their memories, and move on to the next girl to do the same exact thing, and all with the help of a demon ad the powers of hell.

Art (7/10)

The World God Only Knows along with all of sequels and OVAs were done by studio Manglobe. The thing about Manglobe, is that they're great when it comes to action shows, Deadman Wonderland, Samurai Champloo, and Ergo Proxy are all perfect examples of this. But for everything else, they're mostly just decent. Overall, The World God Only Knows is a good looking show but there's nothing really special about it. The only notable thing is it's style. Despite the fact that the show does have a default style that it uses most of the time, they'll often change the style for the sake of gag humor, which was actually quite nice. I was never bored with the visuals because of their ever changing nature and often times, it tended to work in their favor for more comedic results. One last quick tip, when going into the show, be prepared for bright colors. Seriously, trying to watch this side by side with a show like Texhnolyze like i did, so freaking jarring.

Sound (8/10)

The soundtrack is definitely the most impressive part of the show. They could have easily put in a couple of bouncy catchy j-pop numbers and be done with it, but they put some time and effort into it, resulting in some very nice orchestral pieces. The song that plays during the final stage of a conquest in particular, always left me on a good note. Although you will probably have the song "Happy Crescent" sung by the heroine Kanon stuck in your head for a week after watching the first season. Another thing that should be brought up are the openings, both of which are done by a group called Oratorio and are each quite good. But i'd like to specifically mention the opening to the first season, often regarded as the best opening by fans, called "God Only Knows", however the part we hear in the show is only a small snippet of a nine minute long epic, which is worth giving a full listen too. To quickly regard sub vs. dub on this, i'm going to suggest going with sub. For the dub, Chris Patton does great as Keima, and Luci Christanson is acceptable as Elsie, but that's about it. Besides, if you choose the dub, then you miss out on the heroine Shiori delivering her famous "baka/aho" lines, which i consider to be some of the greatest delivered lines in the Japanese language.

Characters (7/10)

There is no doubt that the main pull for a large chunk of fans of the show is the God of Conquest himself, Keima Katsuargi, whose kind of what you'd get if Lelouch Lamperourge was an eccentric otaku. Keima is basically the opposite of what you would expect from a harem protagonist. Where the average harem protagonist is average in every way and only gets girls by being extremely kind, Keima is an intelligent and handsome young man who puts plenty of work and effort into winning over his target. But that also brings up another point of his character, in his eyes, the girls are nothing more than missions that he needs to accomplish. He has been nothing but disappointed by reality and seeks solace in the games that he's so obsessed with, because of this he's an antisocial problem student, and an outcast to his peers. He looks at everything the way he would look at a game, so rather than winning over women with a genuine kindness and understanding, he manipulates them through scripts and planned situations, caring more about getting the conquests over with so he can go back to playing games rather than the girls own happiness. But still, he is still a good person underneath it all and had shown the occasional subtle moment where it seems he does care about the girls he conquers and is also bothered by his own personal situation. Then there's the demon from hell Elsie. I'm not even gonna poke around the bush, Elsie is freaking adorable, everyone who's seen the show knows it and i'm not even going to deny it. She herself doesn't have all that much to do with the conquests, only showing up to capture the loose souls when they're kicked out of the host body. She instead takes the role of Keima's little sister, doing everything in her power to impress him and make him happy just for a little bit of praise, but often fails either because of her own ditzy nature or Keima's stand-offish nature. Also she has a weird obsession with firetrucks. I don'y know why she does or how it's relevant to the series but goddammit it's adorable. The only other character worth mentioning is Haqua du Lot Herminium, Elsie's colleague and friend from hell who also captures loose souls that was introduced in season 2. Haqua is very prideful, not coming from a noble family and instead rises to the top through hard work and determination, but because of this is unwilling to admit her own faults and, at first, doesn't choose to openly acknowledge Elsie as a friend, despite treasuring their friendship. There's not really much to say about the rest of the prominent characters are the heroines and they can basically be summed up with a trope, such as athlete, rich girl, and book worm. Still the show does like to mix things up a little bit by adding new twists to their tropes, like the rich girl is actually poor, or by having the loose souls give the girls powers, like having a personality literally escaping from a girl. But even so, none of the characters outside the heroines really get any development and are basically the same people they were when they were first introduced, and the development that the heroines get are fairly predictable and melodramatic. Still by the end of the series you will most likely have your own favorite heroine.

Enjoyment (8/10) Overall (7/10)

You know those series that you can never consider a personal favorite for one reason or another, but you still love to death for one reason or another. Well for me, The World God Only Knows is one of those series. Yes it's formulaic and simple, but it's always entertaining, and the characters are still memorable. But you should take to mind that this series is not one to be taken to seriously. It's mostly silly and even the melodrama is there for parody rather than emotion. There's not real drama to be found in this series...at least, not until season 3. But that's a review for another day. Until then, remember to find your ideal route in life, because i can see the ending....No i really can't but that'd be pretty cool though wouldn't it.

wayne.adams - 2013-10-05 03:39:53

It's really hard to give an anime I enjoyed so much anything less than a 10, but this anime doesn't really deserve it. Therefore I give it an 8.

The plot is really just a series of contrivances that lead to hilarity and harem bashing, but that is also this show's strength. Keima Katsuragi is one of my all time favorite anime protagonists, but his character is patently (and effectively) one dimensional.

If you are looking for an anime that will blow your mind and leave you questioning life, this is not that anime. If you want to have a good couple hours laughing at some silly antics in remarkably unbelieveable situations, with excellently cheese overacting, then you've found just the ticket.

alene35 - 2013-07-07 09:22:03

I was looking forward to this show this season as i found the manga to be really enjoyable and having a pretty cool protagonist at the same time. Kami Nomi is about Keima, an otaku and a super gaming otaku at that, he's known as the Capturing God who can capture any girls heart as long as the in a video game. Keima soon receives an email that peeks his interest only to find he's signed a contracts with a demon. He is now tasked with capturing loose souls that reside in girls hearts by filling in the gaps with love.The show is split up into arcs that feature the four girls. The first two only take up an episode each but these are used to introduce our main characters and show us what this Anime is going to be like. but the other two girls take up a few episodes each split up by filler episodes before and after that give us more insight as to how dedicated Keima is to gaming, like how many he can play at once, i just feel sorry for who ever pays the electricity bills.The art is pretty good, better than a lot of shows by a long way but does lack a little originality that other shows do have, i tends to use odd expressions frequently and even forms chibi versions of a character to highlight and make the comedy more funny. The animation is a decent part, its pretty smooth and really helps when certain scenes are completely exagerated for comedic effect.Sound is one of the better areas, the opening is great and original, the full song is something like 8 minutes in length and as well as opening the show parts of the full song are used as background music. One of the featured girl characters is an idol and her singing is nice, the voice actor is new to voice acting but you can really tell she excells at singing. The voice acting in general is pretty tame, its outstanding but they portray their characters personality perfectly.Characters are wonderful though not exactly new. Keima is an excellent protagonist, he has no interest in the 3D world or reall girls he only has eyes for video game yet still mangaes to get perfect scores at school, he is forced into a contract and then forced into dealing with real girls and uses his knowledge of conquering a girls heart from games and puts it into use in capturing souls. Elsea is the demon that contracts Keima and is genrally a clumsy girl who tends to be completely useless as she either just watchs Keima or gets him into difficult situations, she also has a scarf that can transform into anything, how conveniant. Ayumi is the first girl to be captured and is a typical athlete character and is bullied by sempai. Mio is a rich snob and acts accordingly but only in appearence. Kanon is an idol and is afraid of disapearing and has issues when people don't pay attention to her on stage and was once part of a music group. Shiori is the quite library girl who does all her talking inside her head and has trouble expressing how she feels because of this. All other characters don't really offer anything and are pretty stereotyped like Kanons manager, Keimas teacher, library chairman, Keimas Mother does have a few funny moments too.The show as a twelve episode series is not that great, its a show that needs a lot more episodes to really flesh the characters out more and thankfully a second series is being made. It has enough funny moments to keep you interested but does unfortunately leave you a little underwhelmed, as a fan of the manga it is a bit disappointing but is by far not the worst show you could watch that incorparates romance and comedy.

audie34 - 2013-03-18 22:45:09

El resumen sobre esta serie basada de los juegos galge o juegos de citas nuestro personaje principal katsurgi keima conocido tambien como el dios caido de los juegos al que un dia se le aparece una chica demonio pidiendole que enamore a las chicas del mundo real cosa que el nunca habia hecho y si no lo hace morira.

1.Historia

La historia en mi opinion es buena el solo hecho de que un demonio se le aparezca da cierta emocion y curiosidad de saber que hara dicho personaje, en el transcurso nos damos cuenta que las reacciones de las chicas son diferentes a las esperadas de los juego por lo que el improvisa haciendolo interesante y divertido, es comica e interesante.

2.Animacion

Este anime consta de muy buenas graficas ademas de actuales lo que la hace mas apta para el disfrute de la audiencia.

3.Caracter

El caracter del protagonista es frio y calculador lo que le da la forma para poder enamorar a las chicas, segun el no se enamorara de ninguna chica haciendole mas facil su trabajo, elsie su compañera tiene un caracter inocente y lindo, es un poco torpe y se mete en problemas facilmente, sus ocurrencias hace mas divertida la serie.

4.Resolucion de la historia

Conforme pasa la historia nuevas chicas aparecen cada una con diferentes personalidades las cuales se decidira por un estilo diferente en cada una de ellas

Opinion final

Es muy buena serie comica, divertida y entretenida a todos los que lean el comentario espero que disfruten de esta serie.