The World God Only Knows - Episode 3

Last week's episode introduced us to a new story arc and a ergo a new girl - Mio Aoyama, a posh, spoiled rich girl on the surface who is in fact living a lie.  The start of this episode fills in the gaps about Mio's situation, with her rich father having passed away leaving their family with nothing but a small apartment which her mother has to work tirelessly to keep up while Mio does little more than waste money on keeping up her pretence as a rich girl.

Of course, this information plays perfectly into the hands of Keima, even more so when Mio discovers him outside her flat and realises that he knows her secret.  From here, Keima puts his plan into action, setting out to help Aoyama by acting as her new chauffeur with a little help from Elsie to create ever more luxurious (and eventually ludicrous) carriages to help Mio feel comfortable.

Despite doing this, Keima still can't "break" this particular girl, until he eventually realises that there's one final obstacle between her and her growing love for Keima.  So, our protagonist sets out to bury those ghosts from her past so that he can win her over and complete his current mission, which he does almost too effectively you could argue.

Certainly, after that disappointing first episode this is far more like what I was hoping for from The World God Only Knows - it established a far more interesting plot and "conquest" for Keima, it slipped in some great moments of humour (including a tongue-in-cheek version of that famous and often wrongly attributed "let them eat cake" quote), and it actually finished in a bittersweet way that I didn't mind too much.  I do still have my reservations about this series (it's hard to like Keima and the way he goes about his business, which worked on this occasion only because Mio wasn't exactly a bright light herself), but the past couple of episodes did enough for me to shelve those misgivings, if only temporarily at least.  Who knows, maybe the next story arc can put those worries to bed entirely?