Kami-sama no Memo-chou - Episode 5

It's summer time as Kami-sama no Memo-chou hits its fifth episode, and we look in on what seems to be a pretty relaxed time for the NEET Detective Agency - well, relaxing if you aren't Alice that is, as she frets about forced attempts to have her clothes and collection of stuffed animals washed and dried.

Amidst this laid-back atmosphere, Narumi finds himself with a job offer from Hinamori - it seems that his yakuza group do a little band promotion as part of their activities, and Narumi is tasked with looking after the promotion of one particular all-girl group (with a member who looks suspiciously like a grown-up Ritsu Tainaka, I should mention).  This seems like a pretty fun job, but Hinamori later warns Narumi that there's a very real danger of a rival group trying to disrupt or otherwise muscle in on their plans.

From here, the rest of the episode sees Narumi splitting his time between Alice and his promotional duties, the latter of which sees him run into a decidedly odd chap named Renji - a trouble-maker who has supposedly tried to put his past behind him but still winds up causing trouble wherever he goes.  Narumi seems to warm to Renji for whatever reason after dragging him out of a venue before an all-out fight breaks out, but as he finds himself distracted by problems surrounding promoting his band as Hinamori's concerns come to fruition, all of this if forgotten.  Of course, it goes without saying that there's almost certainly some kind of link between Renji and Narumi's current problems...

Although I don't want to be too much of a downer about this series given its impressive opener, Kami-sama no Memo-chou really does seem to be getting worse by the episode - this week's instalment felt disjointed and all over the place from beginning to end, filling its running time with stuff that really wasn't that interesting.  While Narumi's forthright attitude means that he's still an interesting enough protagonist, Alice on the other hand is beginning to become a little irritating without any actual detective work to speak of for her to do.  All this said, at least by the end of the episode there's hope of a little more life in the next instalment of this story arc, with some potentially interesting problems for us to get our teeth into - hopefully it isn't wasted on this occasion, as at the moment I really can't get too excited about it.