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Dec 01 2010

Categories: episodic review, twgok
Tagged: the world god only knows

17 Comments »

“Another day spent with my books.”

One of my favorite haremettes appears! Shiori is an even more shy Yuki Nagato with Index’s power. She’s shy, easily flustered, vocally clumsy, turned on by books, over-thinks everything, and intellectually adorable. Which just makes her plain adorable.

(I should do a favorite haremette post sometime. Mmm… maybe after the anime season concludes.)

Shiori is voiced by Kana Hanazawa, who gets this season’s distinction of being Ms. Workaholic. This season alone she voices Tsukimi on Kuragehime, Susukihotaru on Zakuro, Mikan on To Love Ru, and Kuroneko on My Little Sister Can’t Be This Cute. Talk about full slate. Oh, she voiced Fail Whale earlier in the year. Busy, busy lady.

(And a fantastic choice for Shiori. Just understated, overwhelmed, and shy. Conveys it perfectly.)

“Books are eras. Books are life. Books are the sun. Books are songs. Books are lifetimes. Books are promises. Books are the wind. Books are the ocean. Books are stars. Books are the heart. Books are dreams. Books are hope. Books are love. Books are joy. Books are passion.”

Loved Shiori’s monologue about books. Poetic and great BGM… the BGM for TWGOK is just fantastic. And the OP/ED are so lackluster. What gives? Also, I would love to have Keima repeat similar lines except about eroges. Or he could do a duet with Kirino.

One thing about this book romanticism is that the story originally came out in 2008… pre-advent of eBook readers like the Kindle or the Nook or a Kira Yamato tablet like the iPad. I wonder what Shiori’s romanticism would be like concerning those devices? Would she accept them because they allow instant access to more books than a library could ever hold? Would she shun them because they aren’t as poetically romantic as dead trees?

One thing I can say is… I read a lot more because of my Nook and iPad. Also, I managed to reclaim quite a bit of living space because I’m able to get rid of a lot of books, which is another benefit. Sadly, one big drawback is that no one knows what I’m reading. There’s just no way I can chill at a coffee shop and impress a girl because I’m reading Dorian Grey.

(I think Shiori would accept them, just because she loves reading above all else. Plus, she gets a kick out of the new technology in later chapters as she starts writing eroges about her and Kami-sama. And you wonder why ponytail-less Shiori caught my eye.)

(Another 2010 twist? Inception. I kept expecting the rows of bookshelves to curl up a la a crumbling world in Inception.)

“How rude! This is a sacred place of learning, not a place for a lover’s rendezvous.”

The funniest thing about this line is that, yep, you guess it, she’s going to be making out with Keima in a fortress of books in the deepest bowels of said sacred place of learning.

Manglobe put a lot of work into drawing backgrounds for this episode. My gosh. Books. Books! There’s just so many motherfucking books on the plane!

(They just need to do better at the OP/ED. I would have accepted something like one of the Amagami’s OPs where we just see the haremettes shaking their hips, but they should have splurged and gone with something, I dunno, better. Maybe Supercell? Or do a choir with all the haremettes. If they have time to think of moe cancer blob wipes, they have time to come up with an A OP/ED.)

“Go develop some common sense!!!”

Puffy cheek Elsee is fine too. But Elsee’s complete lack of common sense is what makes her a likable character. I much prefer the moe and useless sidekick than the intelligent and quirky one. In fact, wouldn’t it be sweet if Batman teamed up with Elsee instead of Robin? Mmmm…

Disappointed Manglobe didn’t end the episode with Keima’s, “Who needs books?” line. Would have been a nice mini-cliffhanger.

(Keima has really two primary strategies. He either declares major love for the capturing target, a la Ayumi and Mio, or he goes super-belligerent like with Kanon and Shiori. In other words, 50% of his strategies involve him being a tsundere.)

Vocabulary improvement through watching anime: “houkago” = “after school”. Thank you, K-On!. It’s amazing all the useless vocabulary one can pick up from watching enough anime.

(Not sure why they tell us that her birthday is 12/26 when they haven’t for the other haremettes. Is it to make us feel sorry for her since she’ll always get screwed with a single “combined” present?)

The PFP ad with Kanon is kinda freaky. I thought Kanon was hawking Angry Birds because of the bird song she was singing… and, yeah, if no one is going to work on the Angry Imouto idea, I have an even better one: “Angry Haremettes.” You basically launch various types of haremettes at a typical loser male who put up anti-hawt haremette defenses. You can launch an Elsee (weak, ineffective scattering blue bird-type), a Kanon (like the bomb bird), an Ayumi (the yellow bird that sprints), etc. I’m telling you… if only I had my own team of iOS programmers… we’d make millions. It’ll be exactly like the Game Dev Story iOS game except I’d hire a meido secretary (instead of a normal secretary).

(A lot of the stuff we thought were Manglobe fillers like Ayumi’s sempai bullying her on the track team are actually TWGOK bonus chapters. This ad… is not.)

“If she’s not a perfect example, I won’t even bother!”

If this were a Sayonara Zetsubou Sensei-class slapstick show, I would have cut to a quick image of Yuki Nagato. Nonetheless, I sympathize with Keima. I feel the same way about meido.

I have so many questions concerning Shiori and her 15,532 458 books about fire engines. First off, only 458? I like to think there are more. Second, how can she who weighs 41 kilograms possibly push around 458 books, even if they’re on a cart? Third, doesn’t she have to go to class? Doesn’t she have more important business than collecting 458 books? Fourth, if she can memorize the exact location and contents of every book, she is a lot better candidate to house the 10,000 forbidden books. After all, she won’t chomp on your hand or act like a general nuisance.

(See, an iPad here makes sense. I can easily fit thousands of books about fire trucks on my iPad if I chose too. If my iPad weren’t already loaded down with meido images.)

Love at first minor collision?

“Bookish girls tend to be quiet, but they’re quite engrossed in thought.”

I like Tamiki Wakaki’s thoughts about Shiori from the second volume… “I think there are two types of silent people: those who really are silent, and those who actually want to talk about can’t.” There is something to Keima eventually prying that completely open. Well, enjoy the story for yourselves if you haven’t read the manga (shame on you if you haven’t) yet. For the rest of us, we’re all anticipating Shiori’s return to the manga… after 100 chapters and two years, she’s back. I feel like finally both the manga and the anime are running on full cylinders. I hope it continues.

(Another thing about TWGOK is that it makes the haremettes attractive by making them adorable. It’s not a straight up moe like K-On! or brutal sexuality like Seikon no Qwaser or personalities like Bakemonogatari… but straight up adorableness. Even if they’re armed with stun guns.)

Wipes? Manglobe rocks wipes.

“It’s bright red! It’s shiny! Fire engine… I want to learn more about this vehicle!”

Fucking awesome.

I don’t have any other way to describe Elsee’s fanatical fascination with them except I feel the same way about meido and ponytails. Just a bonus that Elsee is so moe when she goes on and on about said fire trucks. If you haven’t figured how why shiny red fire trucks occasionally pop up in this blog (since 2008) or why my Twitter avatar is a shiny red fire truck or why people e-mail me fire truck images, Elsee is why.

Shiny red fire trucks 4 life.