The World God Only Knows: Goddesses Arc – 03

Keima discovers Shiori’s hidden yaoi slashfic talents.

We saw Keima move quickly last week in his search for the 4 remaining goddesses, narrowing it down to just 5 girls. But now is the hard part, courting each of the girls to draw out the goddess, simultaneously because of the time limit on Kanon’s life. Naturally, in such a situation, things can’t go according to plan…

Keima getting hurt is always funny.

It’s been fun seeing Keima pushed to his limits in capturing the girls. Juggling 5 girls at once would be a challenge for anyone, and having to race against the clock doesn’t make it any easier, which was well demonstrated by his failed attempt at walking home with each one of those girls in one day. But as luck would have it, even though it didn’t go at all the way Keima had planned, he still got after-school facetime with each of the girls in (a different) order.

First was Tsukiyo, who I think is a pretty safe bet to be harboring a goddess at this point. Maybe it’s just her personality (gee, it sure would’ve been nice to have seen her actual capture), but she was surprisingly receptive to some obtrusive stalking by Keima, even giving him a bandage when he left. His FFF system seems to be paying off. She’s on the cusp at the very least. A little more questionable, I thought, were the short haired pair Ayumi and Chihiro. Both of their unsolicited violence toward Keima last episode had me feeling good about them, but their reactions in this one seemed colder. Ayumi at least got into a bad mood when Miyako mentioned Kanon, so maybe she’s just holding back. I hope so because, again, she is my favorite girl. Chihiro didn’t seem to act too differently from way way back, before she had even been captured by Keima. Yes, she played her song on the guitar for him, but it wasn’t until later when they were leaving that she showed any emotional reaction to him. I think she’s the most likely to be the odd one out at this point.

Props to Shiori for finding even more fun ways to hurt Keima.

Shiori, on the other hand, seems like a sure thing after her science fiction fantasizing in this episode. Not only does she show signs of remembering the capture, she shows signs of resentment at Kanon in choosing to kill off Kashiragi before writing all the pages in between to explain how he got into the battle. This was actually a pretty fantastic bit with her, a girl I’ve mentioned I’ve found to be boring. Part of it is Kana Hanazawa playing her so meekly – she’s a wonderful voice actress, but she can make her character sound too weak, to the point of annoyance (guess who my least favorite heroine of the Monogatari series is). But since almost all of her conversation with Keima this episode was done through writing, we avoided that, getting access to her inner thoughts through collage picture book art. Plus, her flustered faces were adorable.

And Keima looks good when flustered too, as we saw Yui do to him for the 2nd straight episode. Her overt attraction to him and her overt masculinity indicate strongly that she’s harboring a goddess. Her requesting Keima to crossdress for her seemed like it could be further evidence that she retains some memories. It’s one thing to crossdress, but wanting the potential boyfriend to do the same just screams OTAKU, which could have rubbed off on her when she was in Keima’s body. In any case, Keima doesn’t have to worry about her affection level, considering she’s still aggressively pursuing him despite seeing him trying to court multiple other girls. Let’s just see if he can learn not to lose his cool around her.

This may not be physical abuse Keima is suffering, but it’s close enough to psychological abuse that it’s funny.

Another confounding factor entered this episode in the form of Nora, the demon who tried to kill Keima in Tenri’s arc. Keima and Haqua have managed to keep her in the dark about Kanon while extracting information from her about the demons’ knowledge of the goddesses, but one wonders how long they can keep that up. Once the demons start actively sabotaging Keima’s already difficult capture attempts, things have a chance of really blowing up. I’m looking forward to seeing that happen. At Keima’s expense.

Good progress made by Keima on the day, but there’s still lots of work to be done. Starting with Shiori on their day off!

About lvlln

A math/science geek and a self-dubbed cynical optimist. I don't care if it's deep, if it can make me feel something or laugh, it's fine in my book. @lvlln