Kamisama Dolls - Episode 2

The opening episode of Kamisama Dolls was certainly a case of "nice idea, badly implemented" as it went slightly clumsily about its business.  Still, can it improve now that it's gotten those awkward, tentative first steps out of its system?

The answer to that question is "hmmm, not really", as this second instalment goes about setting up a slightly pointless disaster involving a school clubroom, a Bunsen burner and bunch of chemicals solely so that it can demonstrate the power and potential for good of a kakashi, as all of this just so happens to occur near to where Kyohei is training his little sister Utao in the hope of improving her ability in controlling Kukuri.

This episode also serves to put Kyohei (and by extension Utao) in some further awkward situations, with irresponsible club president (and cause of the aforementioned disaster) Kuuko spotting her otherworldly rescuer during the incident, while it's also revealed that she is the daughter of the detective in charge of investigating the goings-on at Kyohei's apartment in the previous episode.  It seems that all of this is about to pale in comparison to the problem coming the Kuga siblings way however... no prizes for guessing who that might be.

To put it bluntly, everything about this episode felt far too forced to really be interesting - the way a chance to show off Kukuri was introduced and created felt horribly contrived, as did the introduction of the detective investigating Kyohei's case and his daughter.  It wasn't quite cringe-worthy, but it wasn't very far off.  Surprisingly, the best moments of this episode of Kamisama Dolls came from its attempts at humour, which actually worked particularly well, particularly when it came to Utao's loss of concentration at the last moment of her rescue mission, which made me laugh harder than I have all week.  The trouble is, I'm not tuning in to this series for comedy, and the other aspects of the show just aren't cutting it at this moment in time.