Review for The World God Only Knows Season 3 Collection

Introduction

If you’ve seen my review for the World God Only Knows OVAs, you’ll have noted my whinge about OVAs essential to the ongoing plot line sold separately from the main series. In this case the OVAs set up the situation and introduce some characters that play a big part in Season 3 of the show, so you won’t be surprised that I’m moving onto this series having just reviewed the OVAs. Once again, Manga Entertainment had given up the show as a lost cause at the end of season 2, so I imported this release from Australia to keep some PAL continuity across the series.


The demons of hell are overworked, and the situation is only getting worse. Loose souls are escaping from the infernal realm, heading to Earth, and possessing young girls that have emptiness in their hearts. It’s getting so bad now that Chief Dokuro is recruiting the cleaning staff into his Loose Souls Squad, and that means the cute demon Elsie and her trusty broom. She has to go to Earth, find the God of Conquest and enlist his aid in liberating the loose souls from the stricken girls. The God of Conquest is that male who can woo any young female, make them all giddy and weak at the knees, and more importantly fill that empty space in their hearts which harbours the loose souls.


Keima Katsuragi is the God of Conquest... on girl games. This geek has a passion for the 2D realm, and spends his waking moments playing dating simulations on his handheld console. He can crack any game, date any digital female, just don’t ask him to interact with the real world. Of course Elsie seals the pact with him before she learns any of this, which means that they both now have collars that will explode if they fail to find and capture the loose souls. Keima will have to apply his dating sim skills to the real world, he’ll have to woo and charm real life human females. If that isn’t bad enough, Elsie’s taking over his life. First she’s enrolled in his class at school, and then she moves into his house!


In the OVAs, Keima was startled when it seemed that pop idol Kanon recognised him (girls that he ‘conquer’ are supposed to forget him afterwards), and he was downright shocked when his childhood friend Tenri returned. Elsie’s Loose Soul sensor went off, but it turned out that Tenri wasn’t possessed by a Loose Soul, rather she was timesharing with someone more benevolent called Diana. In this collection, Keima learns that Diana is a Goddess, one of the Jupiter sisters, and she’s looking for them, suspecting that they are also resident in the girls that Keima successfully freed from Loose Souls previously. If he is to find Apollo, Minerva, Mars, Vulcanus, and Mercurius, Keima will have to conquer the girls hosting them all over again, with the added impediment that they’ll remember him from before as well. He better do it soon, as an ancient war between heaven and hell is about to reignite. The twelve episodes of Season 3 are presented across two discs by Madman Entertainment.


Disc 1
1. When the Sun Goes Down
2. Scramble Formation
3. 5 Home
4. Doll Roll Hall
5. Punch and Date
6. My Story

Disc 2
7. Bad Medicine
8. Goddess Mix
9. Absent Lovers
10. Labyrinth
11. Show Me
12. The Memory of My First Love

Picture

The World God Only Knows Season 3 Goddesses is released by Madman Entertainment in Australia, adapting Sentai Filmworks release for a PAL market. That means that we get a 1.78:1 anamorphic transfer in native PAL format. The image is clear, sharp and colourful throughout, minus any of the old standards conversion issues, and generally a smooth and unproblematic transfer that takes full advantage of the 576 line resolution. You might notice some aliasing on the finer detail indicative of the limits of the DVD format. There is a Blu-ray option, but you’ll have to import from the US, and be able to spin Region A discs. There is no English friendly Region B option at this time.


The animation itself is very pleasant, and I found that it takes a page from relatively old school anime when it comes to its world and character designs. The artwork is simplified, doing the basic amount to tell the story, the animation is full of bright, primary colours, and that characters are apt to lapse into SD form to emphasise a punchline. But the quality of the animation itself is of modern standards, looking very appealing when in motion, and not scrimping on the frame count.

Sound

You have the option of DD 2.0 Stereo English and Japanese, with optional translated subtitles or a songs and signs track. As always I went with and was very happy with the original language track. I gave the English dub a try and found it to be rather mediocre, not really standing out from other comedy anime dubs. There were fewer character songs for which to switch to Japanese in this series, even though idol Kanon does make an odd appearance, so that wasn’t as much of an issue. The subtitles are clear, free or error and are accurately timed.

Extras

The episodes are presented on this disc from Madman Entertainment packaged in an Amaray case. The sleeve is reversible if you prefer some character artwork and an absence of the oversized Australian ratings logo.

You get a static menu, and this time Madman have edited out Sentai’s translated English credit reels. As per current Madman authoring, you get just the episodes numbered on the disc, no titles.


The extras are on disc 2, and comprise the main opening and closing textless credits, and trailers for My Teen Romantic Comedy SNAFU, Space Dandy Part 1, Log Horizon Part 1, and the worst possible trailer for the brilliant Silver Spoon Season 1. It’s no wonder Madman Entertainment didn’t release Season 2.

Conclusion

The World God Only Knows: Season 3 is an odd series for me, which starts off as my least favourite of the franchise so far, and ends as my favourite. What it does wrong is that it changes up the formula that has been established in the first two series. What it gets right is that it changes up the formula that has been established in the first two series. It’s such an abrupt change of direction for the show, on the level of a genre shift, that it took a good six or seven episodes for my mind to get around it. But once you get what season 3 is trying to do, it becomes a lot easier to appreciate, and it throws in some well deserved and well thought out character development too.


The World God Only Knows up to this point was about dealing with Loose Souls, malevolent spirits that take advantage of emptiness in human hearts (a lack of love) to inhabit and possess innocent young girls. A demon from Hell came to Earth looking for a veritable Casanova with which to form a contract to deal with the loose souls. This was accomplished by said Casanova falling in love with the girls, filling their hearts, and dispossessing the spirits to be collected and sealed away. The problem was that Elsie got the wrong guy, an antisocial hermit of a schoolboy, whose sole experience with love was romancing girls in dating simulations. So Keima had to apply his gaming knowledge to the real world, and fortunately for him, it worked. On top of that, red faces and recriminations were avoided by the girls losing their memories of Keima once the loose souls had been excised.


Only in Season 3, the rules of the game change. Now Keima is looking for goddesses inhabiting the girls. Six goddesses, the Jupiter sisters now on Earth, inhabit the bodies of girls, and all of them that Keima has excised loose souls from before. To make matters worse, the girls are beginning to remember what had happened before when Keima had romanced them. The first of these goddesses, Diana appeared in the OVA episodes, but it’s in this season that we learn what her true nature is, the fact that she has no idea why she’s on Earth sharing bodies with Tenri, and the fact that her five sisters are lost somewhere on Earth too. The first inkling that Keima has of where the goddesses might be hiding also occurred in the OVA episodes, when it seemed that the idol Kanon was on the verge of recognising him. It’s a level of difficulty higher than before, as to find the goddesses, he has to romance the girls all over again, compounded by the difficulty that they remember him, but a kiss will reveal the goddess and awaken her powers.


As the story unfolds, we learn that there is a grand conspiracy afoot, with a faction in Hell trying to overturn the new, benevolent system and return things to the ‘bad old days’, and the first thing that this Vintage group need to do is to find and eliminate the goddesses, so it becomes a race against time for Keima to find them all, and as the series unfolds the conspiracy takes centre stage, bringing the whole of the World God Only Knows anime franchise to something of a climax. It gets really quite interesting by the end, and turns what started off as a procedural anime into more of an overarching narrative.


It does wrong foot you for the first few episodes though, as you try to figure out what’s going on. The second problem for me is that Elsie takes a back seat for this series, and Keima winds up partnering with the other, more straight-laced demon, Haqua, which isn’t quite as much fun, and lacks the love of fire-engines that is so appealing about Elsie. Again, both these aspects of the show sort themselves out as it unfolds. One problem that can’t be fixed is that during the opening episode, there is a flashback explaining the set-up of the show, with a whole lot of scenes Lost Souls being captured, girls being romanced. The problem is that at least two of the flashbacks relate to girls that we haven’t met. They weren’t in the first two series, and they weren’t in the OVAs. Those stories must have been in light novels that weren’t adapted for anime, but the characters are essential parts of the Goddesses storyline, so we get tantalising faux-flashbacks instead, and you do feel that you’ve missed out on a story or two.


Where the third series excels is that it injects a note of reality into the story. When it comes to finding the goddesses, it turns out that there are six goddesses in total, but Keima suspects that they could be hiding in seven girls. That results from their attitudes towards him mellowing, and the sense that they are getting their memories of his previous ‘conquests’ back. The implications of this don’t quite sink in at first, but the tragic truth is that one of these girls, whose attitude towards Keima has changed, has done so for genuine reasons. There’s no goddess within, she’s actually falling for him. So while Keima is playing his usual game of romancing the girls one by one, or at the same time, the fact is that for one girl, he’s just toying with her genuine affections. The fact is also evident, that this social misfit, finally, actually has a chance for love, for a genuine relationship, and for the sake of the ‘game’ that he is playing, albeit a game for the future of the world, he has to throw that chance away. For a series that to this point has been more about entertainment and comedy, there are moments where your heart will genuinely hurt for Keima.


There is more to appreciate than not about The World God Only Knows Season 3, some of it more subjective than not. Certainly a lack of Elsie is a personal disappointment, but the two ‘missing conquests’ do niggle. Also, it seems that time ran out towards the end of the story to really focus on the conclusion of the overarching storyline, so the battle between the Goddesses, Loose Souls Team, and Vintage practically unfolds in the background as the creators choose to focus more on a character moment between Keima, and one of the girls, Chihiro. My opinion is that it’s better for it, focusing more on the emotion of the piece than the technicalities of the narrative, but for fans that are more invested in action eye-candy and the back-story, this may be a disappointment. But all in all, the third season of The World God Only Knows is a great climax for the franchise, should they choose to stop the anime here.