The World God Only Knows Goddesses Episode 10
What They Say:
Keima, a high school student, is an avid player of romantic simulation games. He is known on the Internet as the “Divine Capturer” for his legendary skills to “capture” any 2D girl in games. In his real school life, Keima is considered nothing but a gloomy geek with thick glasses.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
Keima’s attempts to figure out what’s going on with where the last goddess is managed to take him into some amusing but also very emotional areas in the previous episode. Discovering that it’s not inside of Chihiro, after attempting at the whole sick angle path that had both girls trying to take care of him in their own way, has helped him discover more of what’s going on. But now that he’s made such an impression on those around him and resulting in a very emotional moment with Chihiro, Ayumi has lost all patience with him and it’s showing up in a very physical way. Much to Keima’s chagrin as he’s taking the foot to the gut over what he’s done to try and make things right when it comes to the goddesses.
With the festival underway at the school at this point as we’ve seen other events move forward, there’s some uncomfortable time spent as Keima has to do his best to get close to Ayumi during it all and she’s just resistant to it all, holding quite the grudge against him. Of course, Chihiro herself seems to be doing well after all that’s happened, at least in Ayumi’s eyes, and that just makes things a bit more complicated. Thankfully, this doesn’t lead to a whole episode of goofy festival antics and the like but rather delves a bit into the character side of things, especially as it creates a real conflict between Ayumi and Chihiro over what happened with Keima, as it becomes something that Ayumi just can’t get as she realized that she was secretly hoping for her friend to fail in order for her to win.
It all moves along in a rather fun way, in its own way, before it shifts dramatically as the mysterious side that has been operating in the background appears across the board and starts to capture the various goddesses/containers for their plan to kill them. Events do move quickly here as the confrontation brings Haqua in and she’s intent on showing them what for, even as they use Ancient Hell magic, which surprises her. Haqua does manage to cover things up well, which makes her a lot more useful than Elsie, and it’s fun to just watch how she and Keima work together while trying to keep Chihiro and Ayumi relatively in the dark while checking up on the others. This also starts to lead into the bigger issues that are now coming to light as we see more coming from Tenri and Haqua over the war that’s coming, but it’s just seeing a very aggressive and assertive Keima that fits well here with his gaming heritage as he makes his play and sticks with it while it makes sense. Seeing him take control and formulate a plan and follow through with it is spot on.
In Summary:
The World God Only Knows definitely has a good episode here, though it’s less emotional than what we had previously. The series is one that I do have fun with when it gets like this, but it does lack the punch of those more personal episodes. What we get here is definitely enjoyable in the first half as we see the fallout between Ayumi and Chihiro and the kind of strain it places on the path Keima has set so there’s a lot to engage with before it all gets messed up with the arrival of the enemy and their plan to capture and kill all of the goddesses. There’s a lot to like here as we go into the final swing of things and see just how this fight is going to get setup and brew from here.
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.