Tuesday, 23 August 2011

Kamisama Dolls - Episode 8

With their business in Karakami village finished and Kyohei's recounting of his and Aki's past completed, it's time to head back to Tokyo for episode eight of Kamisama Dolls... albeit not for long.

No sooner have they arrived than we see Hibino, Kyohei and Utao heading off for a trip to the beach courtesy of an acquaintance of Hibino's father who runs a boarding house.  Unfortunately for our trio, they've chosen the middle of a typhoon to pay the area a visit, and thus spend half the episode fending off high winds and rain and all of the dangers which come with it as a tree crashes in through the hotel and the power goes out.  Don't worry though, they still manage to shoehorn in some shots of Hibino in a swimsuit and Utao in the bath though in this otherwise filler-ific sub-episode.


We do somewhat return to the show's main plot at this point, as a trip to the library for first Hibino and then Utao ends up as an impromptu meeting with Aki, who warns Hibino about the danger lurking within Kyohei before he (and his kakashi) end up in a scrap in the park with Utao's kukuri.  It's a state of affairs which leaves Hibino irritated and upset - and little wonder too, I'd be kind of pissed if I had to meander through so many mediocre episodes in the knowledge that most people are only paying attention because of my boobs.

Really, this simply wasn't a good episode of Kamisama Dolls - its first half was filler, pure and simple, and its second half simply wasn't that interesting, with some subpar action in the midst of a clumsy and slightly contrived plot which felt glued together rather than a seamless attempt at story-telling.  It seems strange to have filler content in a series that is going to run out of episodes pretty fast at this rate, but in all honesty Kamisama Dolls' real crime is wasting the potential inherent in what seemed like a pretty cool concept for a series.  Of course, it still has time to make its mark (and we've seen in past episodes that it can have its moments), but it needs to apply itself more evenly if it's going to even come close to doing so.

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