The way the one-cour summer ’13 anime and two-cour spring ’13 anime ended/are ending this season, I’ll be able to review all the ones I completed in this post and my post for next week. There’s lots of anime to talk about so let’s get started!…
The World God Only Knows – Goddess Arc
Also called season 3 of TWGOK (or its Japanese nickname, Kami nomi) I actually enjoyed this season the most out of the three. The main reason was because it moved away from the basic gimmick of seasons 1 and 2 of “Keima meets a new girl who has a Loose Soul inside of her and comes up with dating sim-based ways to make her fall in love with him,” to a larger scale and surprisingly darker plot of reviving the goddesses and stopping the evil Vintage. We got to see and learn about more of the history of (New/Old) Hell and other fantasy elements of the series rather than strictly the slice-of-life stuff we’d been having in the previous seasons, and I personally felt the series benefited from such world-expanding and periodic shifts to a darker tone. In addition, rather than introduce even more girls, the Goddess Arc built character for the ones we already had. We of course got to see their feelings for Keima on an even deeper level, and I also liked seeing how they related to the different personalities of their respective goddesses. I really liked the fact that Haqua got some shining moments in this season too – I don’t remember much of what she did in season 2, but I found her particularly likable in this season. Too bad Elsie fans will be disappointed that she didn’t have much screentime in this season :3
Another thing the Goddess Arc had going for it was that it actually made me empathize with the girls I thought were the most bland of the group – Ayumi and Chihiro. Compared to the other girls like Shiori and Yui, there was nothing very memorable to me about Ayumi and Chihiro’s personalities. But they had much more going for them in this season not just in terms of their relationship with Keima, but with each other as well. Chihiro’s selflessness towards the end of the season was quite touching. Keima was also more likable this time around. Unlike the past seasons, it was obvious that he truly felt bad about the cruel way he had to treat Chihiro. And in general, I could feel that he cared more about all the girls this time and saw them as more than just “icky real-life girls he had to conquer” – the whole conflict started because he was determined to save Kanon after all.
Of course, the Goddess Arc wasn’t without some flaws, but to me they were minor. One thing is I don’t know why the anime never showed us Keima’s conquests of Tsukiyo and Yui when they were important characters in this arc (perhaps a later season or OVA?) Some things were a tad too convenient for the plot too, like Keima’s mom being fooled for so long and staying away from the house for the right length of time to resolve everything, and Elsie somehow being able to impersonate Kanon perfectly all those days without doing anything to blow her cover (just looking like her and being able to sing her songs shouldn’t be enough). But Kami nomi is the type of show you have to take with a grain of salt, so discrepancies like this aren’t a huge deal. The only thing that did kind of bother me was that I thought Chihiro took the whole “magical demons from Hell trying to kill me and the guy I like having to make my best friend fall in love with him to awaken a mystical being inside of her” thing a bit too well XD They should have at least made her scared, shocked, and/or in disbelief about it, but she just went along with everything quite calmly, which was too unrealistic. And maybe I just forgot if it was in the previous seasons, but did we ever see Nikaido and Akari being a Loose Soul team before? If not, background on that would have been nice.
But besides some minor problems, I thought the Goddess Arc of Kami nomi was good and had more interesting things going for it than the previous seasons. It certainly makes me look forward to another TWGOK season, whenever that may be.
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Kiniro Mosaic
I really don’t have much to say about this show because it has basically no plot, few characters, and is just all around…cute. It’s another addition to the slice-of-life anime line-up of “cute girls doing cute things.” Like similar anime such as Lucky Star and Azumanga Daioh, Kiniro Mosaic is based on a 4koma manga, so most of the episodes are just a collection of (sometimes unrelated) vignettes rather than having any kind of main plot or conflict to focus on. Usually anime like this have some kind of theme for the girls, like they’re in a particular club (K-ON) or there are a lot of otaku jokes (Lucky Star). Kiniro Mosaic’s theme is that a couple of the girls, Alice and Karen, are from England and are going to school in Japan, and the main girl, Shino, loves England/Western culture and idolizes the British girls (and their blond hair :3) So of course a lot of the cuteness and humor revolves around Alice and Karen’s Japanese skills/cultural immersion and Shino’s over-the-top obsession with English culture. And on the side we have two other girls, a standard boke and tsukkomi duo, Yoko and Aya.
Besides not having an aversion to slice-of-life moe, your enjoyment of a show like this really just depends on whether you find the girls cute and funny to watch. Though not extremely so, I would say I did. The majorly moe and often flustered Alice with the oblivious and always cheerful Shino who adores her, the overly genki Karen and her broken Japanese, and tsundere Aya and her love/hate relationship with Yoko – they were a fun group to watch. Unfortunately, after the fairly steady, and adorable, first episode that only focused on Shino’s homestay with Alice, the rest of the episodes weren’t anything that great. Some jokes were funny, but nothing hysterical. A lot of things were cute and whimsical, but nothing too memorable. Kiniro Mosaic is ultimately the type of show to just relax and turn off your brain with, which is exactly what I used it for – I would watch the new episodes while snacking after a long day at work. It’s not particularly good or particularly bad, but it is soothing…and cute. But sadly I can’t place it among the top tier of cute girls anime.
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Blood Lad
For only having a mere 10 episodes (was the anime just a long ad for the manga?), I think Blood Lad managed to give decent development to its story, characters, and world. Being a shonen series, I would say it’s a “lite” one because it was more often humorous than extremely serious and dramatic. Usually for shows like this that have a lot of fantasy and magic, I like to have backstory and exposition of how their world works. Blood Lad had little of this, but it was okay because that wasn’t important – we just needed to know basics, like the fact that the demon and human worlds are connected and the demon world is made up of a bunch of mafia-run towns. It’s not the type of show that necessitates a lot of details and explaining, so it’s just about 1) liking the humor, 2) liking the characters, and 3) being invested in their conflict(s).
I actually found most of the humor in Blood Lad funny. Just about all the episode gave me at least one chuckle. The characters as a whole were likable too. Staz is a fun anti-hero protagonist who has that familiar sweet/cuteness under his bad ass vampire exterior. The eccentric and love-triangle-inducing Bell and Staz’s “not sure if good guy or bad guy” brother Braz were kind of interesting too. Unfortunately I found Fuyumi to be terribly bland. She was just overly nice and meek with big boobs – there’s really nothing good I can think of that stood out about her in terms of anything she actively did or her personality. Wolf was probably my favorite character because he was “cool” without being too obnoxious and full of himself. I also liked that 3-eyed weasel-looking guy, Mamejirou. He showed a lot of concern for Fuyumi and the others even though the whole conflict didn’t have anything to do with him and I thought that was cute.
Unfortunately in the later episodes of the series, it started to show that the overarching plot and history/politics of the demon world were going beyond the scope that 10 episodes could handle with introducing a bunch of new characters such as Beros and Goyle, the Hydra family, and especially the whole thing between Wolf-Daddy and Braz. However, I did like the twist with Fuyumi and Bell being doppelgangers. The only thing in the series I really had issue with was what led up to the aforementioned twist, with Bell’s brother Knell kidnapping Fuyumi. I didn’t get why Bell had to fight Staz so brutally – I know she was doing what her family wanted (to take Fuyumi), but couldn’t she have tried to explain that to him instead of beating him up? I was confused about whether Bell knew why they wanted Fuyumi, and if she didn’t know anything, why not try and find out rather than take it out on Staz? (I know she was jealous of his love for Fuyumi, but still).
All in all, for 10 episodes I would say that Blood Lad was okay. Like Kiniro Mosaic, I didn’t think it was anything great, but it wasn’t bad either. If another season comes out, I’m sure I’ll watch it.
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Watamote
I liked Watamote from the beginning and I’m pleased to say that I thought every episode from then on was good. What made it so enjoyable to me was, firstly, that it was unique. Not many anime focus on just one character, and even fewer focus on the internal turmoil and everyday struggles of that character. The direction of the show was unique too. Rather than simply telling a story, Watamote was more of a study of one isolated character and how she’s trying to resolve her conflict, a conflict that only the audience is aware of and the other characters aren’t, or at least not to the extent that the audience is. Of course, being unique doesn’t necessarily equal being good, but in Watamote’s case, its unique setup was also endowed with good writing. As I said in my first review of episodes 1-3, the show manages to be both a comedy and tragedy, and yet works well in both tones. Because of how it’s set up, it doesn’t rely on typical means of humor, such as slapstick or characters’ personalities bouncing off each other. Rather, it has to all come internally from Tomoko, so the majority of humor comes from things happening contrary to what she expected/hoped for – thinking she’s gonna see fireworks from the roof but ends up snooping into a love hotel with middle school boys, thinking she’s getting a classy job at a fancy cake shop but ends up in a cold, sterile cake factory, thinking she’s on fairly equal ground with her childhood friend Yuu only to discover last minute that Yuu has a boyfriend…all of these things are funny on one level and tragic on another, and being able to both laugh and cry at this pathetic girl’s delusions and bad luck was an unusual but also strangely enjoyable experience.
Watamote wasn’t lacking in style either. Silver Link did a great job putting special twists on the animation to further convey Tomoko’s situation, such as making many of her classmates faceless or coloring them in a grey tone, drawing Tomoko’s face in exaggerated animation styles to emphasize whatever feeling she had at the moment, or making certain scenes over-the-top crazy to again show how she perceives it, such as the killing the cockroach scene in the last episode. Of course, having a main character who’s an otaku, there were plenty of fun anime and game in-jokes in Watamote too, ranging from Haruhi, Chuunibyou, and K-ON to Attack on Titan and Yu-Gi-Oh!. Perhaps the only thing in the show that bothered me was how utterly oblivious Tomoko’s family, and even her teacher and (few) friends, were to her crippling introvertness. I know there are plenty of parents who don’t pay attention to or are in denial of just how bad their child’s social problems are, so I can’t say it was unrealistic. But still, being 15-years old and unable to carry on a basic conversation with a stranger is pretty telling. The fact that nobody around her notices just what a social wreck she is simply adds to the tragedy of it.
Along with Attack on Titan, Watamote was the anime I most looked forward to every week. It was a unique and engrossing experience as I was fully invested in seeing how Tomoko would try and “become popular” each time and what kind of ironic twist awaited her. I can’t help but give the show points for making me laugh, feel guilty about it, and still enjoy it.
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I also finished Silver Spoon but am debating whether to wait until the other half of the episodes finish airing in winter ’14 to review it, or to give it its own post a little later (since I have different things to say about it than the usual reviews). But anyway, next week I’ll review Attack on Titan, Railgun S, Free!, and throwing in the final episodes of OreImo as a bonus. See ya then~
Nice reviews. So would you recommend Kiniro Mosaic? I really enjoyed Lucky Star and would like to see this if its that similar. Also, I just started watching Silver Spoon and finding it pretty good! I’m trying to get Railgun S as well but I just need to finish Index II first.
I would recommend Kiniro Mosaic if you enjoy cute girls/slice-of-life anime like Lucky Star. You should be able to tell how much you like it by the first three episodes or so.
Glad you’re liking Silver Spoon. I’m most likely going to review it in full in winter of next year when the second cour airs.
Loved the TWGOK ending. Keima just shrugging at the whole world-saving stuff and… leaving. Not like he can contribute anything anymore. A different series might criticize this approach and show the hero struggling to make some kind of difference to the very end, but it made me think that for every mecha pilot fighting to save Earth from destruction, there are plenty of mechanics who can only watch the final fight from the ground with a beer in their hand, even though without their work the hero wouldn’t even be able to leave the ground.
The ending focusing almost solely on the Keima-Chihiro relationship (with the final fight barely an afterthought in the background) also showed how for everyone involved in the love games but not the war, the only thing that REALLY mattered to them were their feelings. It’s only fitting that the anime ends with tears, belying the supposedly glorious victory in the background.
That’s a very interesting way of looking at the ending of TWGOK. I like it =) You’re right that unlike most other protagonist involved in a big fantasy conflict, all Keima could do was make the girls love him. And once that was over, he couldn’t do much of anything else to contribute to the big final battle, at least not the world-saving one that should matter – for him and the girls, the “big final battle” was coming to grips with their feelings, as you mentioned. I liked how in the last scene it showed him going back to his room full of gaming…yet he seemed more melancholic about it. Maybe his experiences with Ayumi and Chihiro made him realize that real girls aren’t so bad after all ;)
I ended up dropping Kiniro Mosaic – I didn’t think it was bad per se, I just eventually got bored after the story (such as it was) got left by the wayside in favour of episodes made up purely of comedy sketches. Anime sketch shows have worked for me in the past – I still love Azumanga, for instance – but mostly I tend to lose interest after a while.
I watched Watamote all the way through though. I don’t think later episodes were as strong as some of the earlier ones, but overall I found it an enjoyable series with plenty of pointed sarcasm and barbed humour. I can definitely see why it’s not for everyone, but I thought there was a lot of interesting material there.
Yeah, the first episode of Kiniro Mosaic can be deceiving since it’s not quite like the rest of them. Since you’ve already seen some of it and got bored with it, I can’t say you’re missing out on much of anything with the rest of the series.
Glad you liked Watamote too. I agree that I can understand why people wouldn’t enjoy it. But I personally thought it was great, for the reasons I described here ;) Not every episode was as good as the others, but there wasn’t one I disliked. Actually, I think my favorite episode was a later one, episode 10.
I was expecting to find Kiniro Mosaic disappointing after the clearly one-off storybook loveliness of the first episode, but every week I found the jokes spot-on, the characters’ relationships well drawn and the soundtrack utterly delightful. I think it’s one of the better moe slice of life series I’ve seen. I didn’t even have a particular fondness for any of the characters; I just found their interactions and the humour and sweetness really well written.
I agree with you more on the other three, though. I still hold that the best show of the season is Uchouten Kazoku. Hell, I rate it above my top picks of the previous seasons (GJ-Bu, Love Live!, Maou-sama, Gargantia and Aiura); Uchouten Kazoku’s my number one anime of the year so far.
Good to hear Kiniro Mosaic clicked so well with you. It’s the type of show where it’s hard to describe exactly why you found everything so charming or why you found things disjointed – I certainly liked it more than not, it just didn’t grab my attention as much as other similar anime. But as long as enjoyment is derived, whether a lot or a little, I guess that’s what counts in the end ;P
As I said, I shall keep Uchouten Kazoku in mind for future viewing.
I’m surprised at the hate WataMote is getting. It’s bittersweet, quite adorable and very funny.
Hmm, mostly everyone I know who watched it liked it. Even the people I know who don’t like it at least think it’s decent, just not enjoyable because of the tragic aspect of Tomoko’s character. But seeing that it doesn’t have a particularly high rating on MAL must mean that there are lots of people who don’t like it – just nobody I know I guess =P
Watamote was painful for me, a little bit. I wasn’t socially awkward growing up, but I did go through a… umm… chuunibyou phase I guess it was. Part of it was hating all the “normal” kids. I never quite got to wishing terrorists would hold the school up, but I definitely had a lot of anger going on. I’m 25 now, doing pretty well in the real world, and I still have little fantasies/daydreams and stuff all the time when I’m bored.
Watching poor Kuroki going through everything simultaneously broke my heart and made me nostalgic. Very weird combination. I enjoyed it greatly; it hit home in quite a few aspects. I took to the manga because I wanted to continue haha. It’s good (the manga), I’m glad it’s still going on. I definitely enjoyed the anime, and I also understand why people wouldn’t be able to stomach it.
I like how they chose to end it. Not the whole episode, I think the previous one might’ve been a much stronger end, especially if they somehow included the upperclassman’s admission that she recognized Kuroki’s drive. But at the very end, where she just stops caring (that’s how I interpreted it)… I liked that.
Like I said to Adzui above, even people who found Watamote hard to watch can usually see that it’s a well written show (though it your case you enjoyed it even though it made you sad, so that’s cool). I had some social issues similar to Tomoko when I was younger, but not nearly as bad, LOL. I didn’t hate the popular kids so much as want them to accept me even though I was “different” or I thought that something maybe was wrong with me. I also had trouble talking to strangers too, but again, not as bad as Tomoko XD
The problem with TWGOK S3 is that it skipped almost 70 chapters before the start of the show. Tsukiyo and Yui’s conquers are indeed important, and the anime just skimmed through them. Both Nikaido and Akari were shown to “know” certain things in the manga, though no backgrounds on their origin of the loose soul team though. I marathoned the 70 chapters of the managa in one or two days just so I could watch the anime, lol xD
And indeed, I also don’t know if I should laugh or cry during the full course of Watamote, not sure if that’s a good or bad thing xD There was an Attack on Titan parody? Never noticed it (unless it’s the cockroach one) but that Another parody was oddly fitting and funny xD Surprised you didn’t mention it since it was one of my favorite parodies in it.
Thanks for the background on TWGOK. It’s a shame they skipped so many chapters…I guess they really wanted to get to the Goddess Arc in the anime XD But besides the full stories behind Tsukiyo and Yui, and more scenes with Nikaido and Akari, I didn’t feel like anything was that lacking in the anime, so that’s good.
I did forget to mention the Another parody XD I don’t recall the exact scene/episode, but I remember seeing Tomoko do the Recon Corps salute from Attack on Titan.
Yeah, TWGOK was good, but we really are missing the other conquests. Yui’s story in particular seems to have been really interesting… But in general, I also liked it. I think they crammed too much into the last show (they seem to be doing that a lot recently…) and too many things happened, and had to be closed, so there was not much time for everything. Chihiro’s apparent un-shocked acceptance of everything could be related to that. I really liked Chihiro on this season. She got the short straw for everything, but managed to put up a strong face, and deal with it, and keep moving forward. I felt really bad for her. I agree Keima was a lot better here. He really cared for the girls, and really felt bad about hurting Chihiro. It was also interesting, that he did not mention the games, or game characters as much as he used to before. Anyway, it made him more real, and much easier to relate too. I also hope they tackle those conquests we did not see on future OVAs, or another season later on.
Kiniro Mosaic was really enjoyable, but I do feel a bit let down with the show… I had not read what it was about before I watched the 1st episode, and I was completely charmed with it. Shino’s stay in Great Britain was really good and fun, and I really liked it! Then it went to Japan, and while it’s not bad, it’s just more of the same we have seen before. I think the show would have done really well, if they continued Shino’s stay on England. At least I found it more fun, and with Japanese love of foreign things, they may have enjoyed it more as well. Still, as you mentioned, it’s just a show to sit and enjoy without giving it too much though. So it is not really bad.
I have not seen the other 2 shows. I watched parts of them, but did not finish them. May do so later. But good shows this season :)
Agree that Keima and Chihiro were a lot more likable in the Goddess Arc :3 As I said in the post, before I thought Ayumi and Chihiro were the blandest of the girls, but not anymore, LOL.
I too would have enjoyed seeing more episodes with Shino’s stay in England. As you said, Japanese high school settings are too common in slice-of-life comedies, so one with a Japanese girl in England would certainly be unique. Or maybe have the first half of the series in England and the second half in Japan. But oh well. It was still a cute, fun show regardless =P
I also found Tomoko’s family’s obliviousness to her social awkwardness irritating, but I felt it added to how realistic and depressing the portrayal was to real teens who are in the same situation. Watamote definitely excelled in mixing comedy with the sad facets of reality in teen society.
I have yet to watch the third season of The World God Only Knows…
Yeah, her family’s obliviousness was kind of unrealistic, but at the same time not too much so – as you said, I don’t doubt there are plenty of families like that in real life. I agree that it adds to the whole simultaneous comedy and tragedy theme the show has going.
-Kiniro Mosaic was a godsend.
-Watamote made me have a long, hard look at my life. To be more specific, how I spent my Summer vacation in 2011. A lot of anime editors write posts about how certain episodes or shows teach or reflect something about their lives, Tomoko’s Summer Vacation episode made me reflect on my own life.