The World God Only Knows Season 2 - Episode 12 (Completed)

With Nagase arc concluded last episode, The World God Only Knows gets to say its goodbye (while very much putting money on a third season, it seems) with a filler episode to round things off.

Of course, without any Loose Souls around to worry about, Keima has plenty of time to focus on his gaming, which brings him to a curious title with utterly horrible artwork concerning a goofy-looking girl with huge eyes (cue comments about Key visual novels here).  However, despite its aesthetic horrors and for some unknown reason, Keima finds himself hugely drawn to the game's story of a girl named Yotsuba Sugimoto, finding it to represent some kind of dating sim nirvana for him.

During his time playing the game, our God of Conquest is the recipient of an e-mail from the game's developer, asking for his input on their next title which is in development - a request which finds Keima torn with regards to what actually makes a good game - is it the girls, the mechanics, the niches it looks to fill, and so on.  In the end, he effectively comes to the realisation that to create a so-called perfect game for everyone is impossible, leaving him simply to conclude that dating sim fans should stick together under a common banner and not worry too much about what makes a good game, as it's all about the girls in the end anyhow.  Or something.

As final episodes go, this felt like a quickly thrown together affair; a lumping together of various facets which had a few genuinely funny moments (from a quick The Girl Who Leapt Through Time parody to a dig at buggy games that over-extend themselves) but not enough to hide the fact that this was effectively a cheap and dirty episode to fill the show's quota while still finding time to dangle the season three carrot in front of fans.  As for me, I'm not entirely sure whether I'd sign myself up for a third season of The World God Only Knows - overall, I'd rate this series more highly than the first perhaps as it did succeed in freshening things up from time to time (notably with Haqua's introduction), but as a whole it still relied too heavily on Keima's trickery and character tropes to progress when it had some genuine opportunities to do something fun with its premise.

Of course, having said all this I'll doubtless still find myself watching a third season because I'm a glutton for punishment (I did watch Star Driver all the way through, after all), but even when I'm having fun watching this series I'm always plagued by this nagging feeling that it should be doing much, much more with the core concept it presents to the viewer, even if that isn't necessarily the fault of this anime adaptation as much as it is its source material.