The World God Only Knows: Goddesses Arc – 09
FAIL
 This final capture of the Goddesses arc has been quite the ride so far, and we finally got a mini-climax with Keima finding himself chasing the wrong girl and quickly having to reverse course. Meanwhile, more and more details unfold regarding Vintage’s actions and there’s even the appearance of a 3rd party who’s just observing them and Keima at this point… |
Yup, she finally shows herself. Now, one wonders for how long Ayumi has been remembering that time when Keima supported her through her fake injury.
First of all, FUCK YES, Mercurius confirmed for being inside Ayumi. It was a toss up for a while (assuming you didn’t listen to the full opening song which starts with the line “Run” in Mercurius’s part), but the better girl wins out. There is justice in the world of KamiNomi after all.
Second, Keima is a huge asshole. Okay, we knew that already, but he got a pass because he tended to help his marks. It should be obvious by now that I’m no fan of Chihiro, but no one deserves the treatment she got from Keima. After she finally worked up the courage to confess, then asked him out, then conceded to his physical demands, then told him again that she loved him for a long time, she got told that he was just playing her. It was the manifestation of the worst fears that an adolescent can have when putting oneself out there. There’s even the added pain of being told that he was doing it as revenge – this only happened because of her choice to be so mean to him in the past.
“Call me old-fashioned, but I like a dump to be as memorable as it is devastating.”
And this is the girl who fell for him naturally, without him needing to court her like the other girls (despite his best attempts). It’s a bit sad what a control freak he is; despite the countless girls he’s romanced, he can’t accept that Chihiro just fell for him for no reason. He has a set structure in his mind that she keeps breaking, by actually being a normal girl in love with him. I said I was going to feel bad for the losing girl, and yup, that’s what’s happening.
I’m not sure what Keima was thinking with his story about playing her. I understand that he had to cut things off with her quickly, but doing it that way did him no favors for Ayumi’s route. Even if Ayumi hadn’t been watching the whole time, surely she would have heard of it from her best friend and bandmate. He’s the asshole who broke her best friend’s heart after she went out of her way to reach out to him: getting her to fall for him now is a monumental task. I guess he has the excuse that this was the first time a regular girl kissed him due to actual feelings she developed by herself, and his head was probably spinning. And it was a genuinely difficult situation; I have no idea what I would have done in his shoes. Then again, I don’t claim to be the God of Conquest.
Bad move with the swimsuit, Diana, if you really wanted Tenri to seduce him. Also, since they share bodies, is it a problem that Diana fell for Tenri’s “fiancee?”
I’ve always had an affinity for Tenri. She is overly meek like Shiori, but at least Diana helps to balance that out. She can also lay claim to having fallen for Keima without his input, though she does fall into the cliche childhood friend role. I thought it was a nice touch that she came to comfort Keima right when he was feeling down from rejecting the other girl who actually fell for him. Real relationships with real people just refuse to fit into his galge paradigms, but they’re the only way he gets to actually feel real feelings.
That hair color and style don’t look familiar at all.
I was a little disappointed not to see any Haqua this week, but I’m liking the other developments of the conspiracy and political intrigue story. The show is still holding its cards close to the chest, but we did get some very interesting reveals. First, we finally got a confirmation that Yuri is indeed plotting something, after seeing her stalking Keima in prior episodes. And she’s not working with Vintage as I had suspected, but with who appears to be the 3rd girl from the montage of Keima’s conquests at the beginning of the season, the mad scientist Akari Kurakawa. I think it must be connected to Keima’s revelation that their high school must be connected to the goddesses somehow. That’s a neat way of explaining why every goddess is conveniently harbored inside a student of that school for Keima to capture. And probably connected to what Kanon/Apollo is doing in her sleep to cleanse Maijima.
If I had to guess, Akari and Yuri either make up or are working with a faction loyal to the school or town and are aware of its history with goddesses. Perhaps we can think of them as the side of the humans, to go with the side of heaven (the goddesses and the new-hell demons) and the side of hell (Vintage). But that’s just conjecture. At the very least, they don’t seem outright antagonistic to Keima and are instead watching both him and Vintage to find the right moment to make their move. I can’t wait to find out more next week. And Ayumi’s recapture too. I have no idea how that can go well for Keima, but he’s worked miracles before.
The first boss returns as the last boss. I’m hopeful she will return as the last last boss, Keima’s true route once he gets that darn ring off his neck.
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
POWUH: Meta Team and Spammy Tamer with 7115 comments
Part of me thought that, as brutal as what Keima said to Chihiro was, that it might have been the best of the things he could have said to her (acknowledging that he’s NOT smooth with the ladies, and had moved into completely foreign territory. It actually felt like he was saying that about 3D girls and routes to try to pull as much of the blame on himself as possible. He could have left out the parts about calling her stupid, tho, that was just unnecessary cruelty, but that gets back to him being him.
It really did make you feel bad for Chihiro. She must have REALLY liked him. And to have him turn 180 and refuse her after seeming to be on her side is just heartbreaking. I thought the show handled that heartbreak pretty well. And it was good that Keima actually showed some remorse later.
POWUH: and Vampire Lover with 11746 comments
“No one ever does what I tell them to”. How foolish. Keima still doesn’t grasp the fact there’s a huge difference between reality and what he thinks should happen.
I try my best to tolerate his generally detestable personality throughout this series (To be honest, Keima is my least favorite of them all) but I have to say he was a total asshole the way sent Chihiro off. He could have put her down nicely, could have said there was someone else he liked but had trouble deciding. At least there, there would have been some kind of understanding but how he chose to handle it was far too cruel for me. What’s worse, she’s probably the best he’s ever going to get. 2D girls can’t help him in the real world.
POWUH: iLurker with 6 comments
You can say that Keima is an asshole all you want, because it’s true. But, if you really think about it, the situation Keima was in this episode has no “good” solution. Whatever he would have done would either be cruel or would likely backfire tremendously later on.
Let’s say he sends Chihiro off nicely saying, for example, that he likes someone else. This in itself might not push Chihiro away. After all, in her eyes, what are the chances that Keima, the Otamega, would be loved back by another girl. Not only that, but if he sends her off nicely after all that happened in this episode, Chihiro will definitely conclude that he cares for her. In any case, any “nice” rejection would most likely cause Chihiro to stick around.
Letting Chihiro stick around would preserve the love triangle, which in itself makes the Ayumi conquest really difficult. But I think Keima doesn’t want Chihiro to be involved with the goddesses stuff. It might be for her own good, since involving her with the goddesses is involving her with Vintage as well. Or might be he just want her out of the way because he doesn’t want her to produce flags he doesn’t want: he has failed to read Chihiro from the very beginning, and letting such an impredictable factor around is something he really doesn’t want.
In any case, Chihiro’s feelings would have been crushed sooner or later. Keima’s strategy was probably to try to mitigate the damage by cutting ties with her as soon and as definitive as possible.
It’s not that I condone what Keima did, I also think that Keima went overboard with cruelty. But I believe that when one thinks about it with cold logic, this kind of hard rejection is the optimal solution.
POWUH: 700-799 and Parkouring Fanboy with 776 comments
I don’t think this was optimal at all. In fact, it was one of the worst possible ones, for Keima’s new goal of capturing Ayumi. Again, I doubt Ayumi is going to be feeling much affinity for the jerk who pulled a fast one on her best friend and broke her heart. His first thought of telling Chihiro that he was just trying to get close to Ayumi would have been a better move. Maybe Chihiro wouldn’t have backed down, but a love triangle seems more desirable than the situation where both girls justifiably hate your guts. Yeah, yeah, as Keima showed in Ayumi’s arc, one can flip hate into love, but it’s not like that’s particularly easy. He got lucky the 1st time around by being the only one to notice her ponytail.
POWUH: iLurker with 6 comments
There are many things to consider here.
First I must say that the fact that Ayumi withnessed the whole thing is what really doomed the capture of Ayumi. You see, he planned to reject Chihiro but didn’t planned on Ayumi knowing HOW he rejected her. You might say that Chihiro might tell Ayumi, but I don’t think Keima would have let Ayumi know the details, that is, Keima would have counted on keeping them from making contact with each other long enough.
Second, I agree that his original plan of telling her that he wanted her help to get close to Ayumi might have worked better, but that is before she kissed him. Keima let the opportunity pass in exchange of pondering about Chihiro’s love. Once he started to take interest on it, the plan wasn’t much of an option. Sure, he could have said it anyways, but chances are it would have been as cruel or even more.
Remember last episode when Chihiro and Keima were watching Ayumi in stage?, Chihiro was the one that suggested to go see the bonfire when Keima asked about Ayumi’s popularity. That was jealousy. If Keima were to tell Chihiro that he choose the popular Ayumi over the “normal” Chihiro after she revealed her feelings to him, it would probably blow away every bit of confidence the girl might have gained after her original conquest.
Again, it might have worked if he said it before Chihiro went on her love for him. But Keima didn’t want to go on when he didn’t understand Chihiro’s reasons, that was his downfall there.
Third, this is no ordinary love triangle. I will cheat a little here and base this argument in something Keima explained in the manga that was left out in the anime. A love triangle between strangers can be easily broken when two parties share her feelings and leave the third party behind. This of course leaves the third party in despair but as long as the couple is more concerned about themselves, they can go on.
But when all the elements of the love triangle are concerned about each other, the triangle becomes too stable. Breaking a love triangle like that might mean breaking a friendship.
But the love triangle here is still not in that stage: Ayumi is the only one concerned about the other parties, while Chihiro is still in the dark about Ayumi’s feelings (as far as Keima knows). So basically Keima probably did this to leave Chihiro out and prevent an even more complicated situation. The situation with Ayumi is more difficult but Keima has more control over it because the factor Chihiro is out of the equation.
Again, this is analyzing with cold logic. What do you do when you have a system with two equations?, you reduce it into one equation and solve it.
POWUH: 700-799 and Parkouring Fanboy with 776 comments
Yeah, I thought of that, that having a love triangle with 2 best friends is a really tough situation to make progress in. Especially if you’re going after the girl who gave up for the benefit of her friend. But I don’t know that it’s worse than being a downright villain in their eyes due to the sheer cruelty of what he did. I mean, Chihiro has been such a wild card for Keima, defying his predictions at every step, that I can certainly see why he’d want to get her out of the way. But that? That was above and beyond the call of duty, and it jeopardized his standing with Ayumi.
POWUH: iLurker with 6 comments
Well, when I said it was optimal, I meant that the strategy about harshly rejecting Chihiro to concentrate in Ayumi was optimal for keima’s modus operandis. This of course as long as Ayumi is kept in the dark about the details, which was not accounted for.
But I believe that, with Ayumi spying, there is nothing Keima could have done to get the Ayumi route any easier.
If he didn’t give a definitive rejection, Ayumi would keep pushing him towards Chihiro until he does so, only prolonging the hurt for everyone.
If he knew Ayumi was spying, the best thing he could have done is just shut up and get out of there.
POWUH: iLurker with 7 comments
Actually, after and during the date, you can see Keima is completely off his game BECAUSE he was so affected by Chihiro. If he wasn’t, he would have spouted the “I only wanted to ask you how to get along with Ayumi” line, but the confession has such an affect on him, he completely messed up the game plan and you can tell he it wasn’t what he wanted to have happen from the look on his face after watching her run down the stairs, the way he was condemning himself after Ayumi kicked him, and the way he looked in the bath….all very anti-Keima things.
POWUH: 700-799 and Parkouring Fanboy with 776 comments
Yeah, and I really liked that Tenri came in to comfort him in that scene, because she’s also someone else who fell in love with him without any manipulation, in defiance of Keima’s expectations.
POWUH: 600-699 with 691 comments
There’s a reason why he reacted like that… he has a Persona aka. Otamega, which boils down to the fact that before all this things with devil spirits he was the guy who rejected the real for games, besides he didn’t get out with just a scratch, he got hurt too; but, thinking logically, best to turn down a girl brutally and cut the ties with her than put her(a normal high-school girl, that doesn’t have a freaking goddess inside) in a highly dangerous position where she’s gong to die(that doesn’t mean he’s not a jerk, that was a mean way to turn down a girl)…It’s kind of a guys instinct to push girls out of harm even if we have to hurt them…I think
by the way…
I found Clannad(the game)to download *0*
go Tomoyo route(it’s the funniest to date) o/
go Kyou route(I cried the whole time when it neared the ending)
POWUH: 700-799 and Parkouring Fanboy with 776 comments
I’m not a fan of Key, sorry. I was burned by Air and Kanon, and decided after 10 or so episodes of Clannad that I had suffered enough abuse. The thought of reading through the dozens of hours of Clannad makes me want to get run over by an SUV.
I just think Keima could have pushed away Chihiro more tactfully that left him in a better position to pursue Ayumi.