Kamigami no Asobi – 07

Because everything is Yui’s fault, always.

I want to like Balder just because he’s voiced by Kamiyan, but I don’t know… I think at this point, I’d be happy if he was friendzoned. Loki is looking like the slightly more appealing of the two, and he’s the one who made the episode painful to sit through. …This pain which actually has nothing to do with this post being later than normal. I was just busy all weekend at a convention (I got to meet Asakawa Yuu~).

Aaaaand Loki goes from wingman to the complete opposite of one. I’m not saying that I want Balder and Yui to be the OTP, but there seems to be a very thin line between “stay away from my best friend” and “stop seducing my life partner away from me” here. Couldn’t we have gone the entire season without these BL intonations? This was going so well with them. Sure they threw in random male frolicking/skinship, but it never really interfered with the plot or Yui’s interactions with the characters. It wouldn’t seem so BL-ish if Loki had a problem with Balder hanging out with the male characters as well, but he seemed perfectly okay with everyone beforehand. …Actually, he seemed okay about Yui too, minus that one incident at the beginning.

So maybe the problem here isn’t Loki’s attitude about Balder and Yui, but the suddenness of it. Loki seemed like he was doing okay with becoming friends with the others before this, even with Balder showing some concern towards Yui being friendly with other characters. This event was kind of oddly placed, since Loki seems to only be angry because the story is focusing on this now. There was the first episode, but no other signs of him being concerned about anyone taking Balder away from him.

Where Thor fails at having a personality, he sure is handy for exposition.

Though maybe this has a reasonable explanation too. Loki probably just didn’t notice that Balder was so interested in Yui before, and it’s really only this episode where Balder doubled his efforts to be around Yui. …Which also seems kind of weirdly placed. Tsukito was one thing because the plot obviously pointed out the lovers aspect out to everyone from the beginning, but Balder seems to be concerned about Yui hanging out with everyone. Where was this the episode that Yui hung out with Takeru? Or Hades? I suppose he might not have been as concerned with Yui hanging out with them because she was just trying to help everyone graduate, but he showed absolutely no concern whatsoever of Yui smiling with others in those episodes.

The whole scenario is just tedious in general. Balder wants to become closer to Yui because she’s close to the other gods, and Loki is placing himself closer to Yui because he wants her away from Balder. It’s a vicious cycle. Though the suddenness aside, Loki’s issue here does make sense. If he only had one friend (Thor aside) for all of his life, of course he doesn’t want anyone to take that friend away. Sure, Balder has plenty of friends because of his magnetism, but Yui is the first one Balder seems genuinely interested in.

I always thought that Balder would make a good yandere, and what do you know. Er, or at least as close to a yandere as you can get in a Cero B (ages 12 and up) rated game. Is there an actual explanation as to how Yui resists Balder’s god powers/whatever, or is this just another typical “the main character is special because she’s the main character” type things? Balder’s personality seems like it has a reasonable explanation though, since he’s so used to absolutely everything going his way. He probably has no idea what to do with someone like Yui, who doesn’t automatically fawn over him or act the way he wants her to. With that attitude, it seems kind of obvious that he’s not really OTP material. He probably doesn’t see the real Yui, and seems interested in her only because she’s different. Though now that I think about it, Apollon kind of has a similar issue (it’s not exactly the same and of course, the storyline hasn’t gotten into it yet). I think they can probably turn around Apollon’s issues into something that works though, where with Balder, there’s probably not enough time. …Though they can just as easily turn Apollon’s issue into why romance doesn’t work, leading into an overall friendship ending for everyone.

Yui’s dialogue variation kind of took a dive here, since she could never really tell Balder “no” properly or really deal with Loki. Though having her not react to Loki maliciously trying to seduce her and instead be stuck on being friends/graduating was nice. It can be painful if the heroine is ignorant about everything romance all the time, but here it just worked well with Yui’s character and how she manages to get along with everyone. If she had reacted, that probably would have just made Loki’s actions worse. Even if it was totally by accident this time, Zeus seems to have picked the right girl to get along with everyone here. Given Zeus’s attitude though, who knows if he even put any thought into picking Yui. Maybe this is coincidence too.

I’m not saying that this was all bad. Thoth’s usual lecture position was actually kind of humorous this episode. …Probably because he never actually said anything. Plus there seems to be a reasonable explanation to why Loki is suddenly concerned with Balder’s love life. As poorly placed this event is, it is the first change in Balder’s actions towards Yui that we’ve really seen. Plus maybe they can turn this whole thing around in episode 8. This is the first episode that we’re really mixing two gods problems and having Yui deal with both of them at once. Maybe the game did this too, since Balder and Loki’s issues seem to be intertwined-ish (I mean, unless there’s absolutely horrid writing/character continuity, I don’t see Yui managing her way through Balder’s route without Loki trying the same thing he did here), but this adds some variation to the plot at least, right?

…Yep. I’ve decided that the best way to deal with this turn of events is by completely filtering out any BL-ish content and to live my life in denial. Loki is only concerned about Balder as friends as far as I’m concerned. In any case, it should be interesting to see how Yui solves this. …And if this 2 episode issue counts as Loki’s episode, this is a little disappointing. Everyone else had episodes that improved their character or at least didn’t have them acting like a jerk to Yui. Unless they manage something in the next episode, they’ve completely missed the opportunity for cute moments. Er, I mentioned Loki specifically here, but this applies to Balder too. He’s gone from being clumsy to being… kind of creepy. Yandere tendencies would normally be a positive thing (or I find them entertaining anyways), but that’s not exactly endearing the character to the viewers, like what they did in with the characters before this.

Yes, what wonderful… friendship. Just look at those friends and their friendly friendship.

About Karakuri

University student and the one at Metanorn who's known for wearing glasses. Likes blood, insanity and plot twists, but also plays otome games and adores cute romance anime. It balances out... somehow.