The World God Only Knows - Episode 12

After finishing its last proper story arc last week, we knew we'd be getting some filler to close off this first season of The World God Only Knows - then again, judging by at least one of the early filler instalments for this series that isn't necessarily a bad thing.

While the end of his quest to free Shiori from her Loose Soul should give Keima some down time, it only serves to show him just how much gaming he's missed in the interim while he's been chasing around after real-life girls - in short, the guy has a backlog, and as an anime 'blogger I know exactly the kind of pain a hefty backlog can bring to a guy's spirit and level of satisfaction.

With Keima determined to catch up on his gaming, we finally get a glimpse into his bedroom, and what an impressive sight it is too - with racks and racks of consoles, and a huge cache of Xbox 360s (because lets face it, with that kind of failure rate you need one).  Indeed, Keima has pretty much every gaming system known to man, and even more impressively his abilities allow him to play up to six games at one time without skipping a beat.

From here this episode is really little more than a loving homage to old games and (more importantly) games systems, from the current generation of consoles right back to the days of the NES (Power Glove and all) and even further into the past towards the era of having to load games on cassette - an era that I not only remember but actively participated in, which makes me feel really old.  Thanks a bunch, Manglobe.  So, while this episode was pretty dull overall, I did get a kick out of the console and game references as well as the playful way that the episode was animated (including an awesome scene which nailed its film effect brilliantly), so at least that gave me something to coo over in the midst of... well, not very much actually happening here.

In a way, I suppose that almost sums up The World God Only Knows thus far to a tee - it's technically quite proficient and does everything that it sets out to, but it turns out not to be very interesting beyond that.  Given the hype and the wonderful things I'd heard about the source material, I can't really hide my shock at just how run of the mill and ordinary this series is; it doesn't subvert the dating sim-cum-anime genre at all really, and to all intents and purposes it's little different to, say, Amagami SS but with some back story tacked on to explain it all.  Given the aforementioned hype I'll just comes out and say it - this show has been the season's biggest disappointment for me by far.  It certainly isn't bad, but it hasn't done anything memorable either, and that is the Divine One's biggest sin.