Title: The World Only God Knows : Goddesses season 3

Director: Satoshi Osedo

Writer: Hideyuki Kurata

Studio: Manglobe

U. S. Distributor: Sentai Filmworks, Section 23

U. S. Release Date: March 10th, 2015

Format: Blu-ray / 12 Episodes / 300 minutes

Genre: Harem, Romantic Comedy, Gaming Parody

Age Rating: TV 14

Overall Personal Grade: B-

Synopsis:

Dating Game master Keima Katsuragi’s skills at conquering hearts in the virtual world have translated into real life so well that he and Spirit Hunter associate Elsie have already captured 14 of the runaway spirits attaching themselves to the souls of different girls. But is even the God of Conquests up to the task of romancing six REAL Goddesses?

The fate of the world may depend on it, because if Keima can’t do it six more times, a renegade faction of demons will use the Goddesses power to unleash an even more dangerous and powerful group of demons. That could mean the devastation of both Heaven and the Earth! (Not to mention Keima losing his own head.) And if the situation wasn’t difficult enough, it seems that the Goddesses’ souls are hidden inside girls that Keima has already had to make fall in love with him before. As part of the magic spell, they’ve all forgotten about him… or have they?

Commentary:

It is understandable that the overall popularity of the series pushed the studio to make a 3rd season. It is also understandable that there was some attempt to use the earlier plot line to help drive the current story. I can appreciate both, but as it all too often comes to pass I can say that The World God Only Knows: Goddesses doesn’t even come close to being as entertaining as the first two seasons.

It is great to see all the characters come back and to have the wide array of personalities to play off of it just felt forced and more than just a little contrived. Of course it is natural that anime come across contrived because it is contrived. Once in a while an anime will feel somewhat natural, but most of the time you walk away thinking to yourself that they really pushed it this time. The World God Only Knows: Goddesses doesn’t pull any punches in that category.

In the first two seasons I kind of felt sorry for Keima and his delusional personality. In this installment I wanted to punch him one minute and praise him the next. I guess that this emotional response is a positive reaction for the overall feel of the series. It says that I did care about his character enough to get mad at hime or applaud his naive heroics. Either way I will mark that up as a plus. The characters I ended up not caring for at all where the goddesses. They came across rather dense and silly at times.

Overall Grade: B-

The overall writing for The World God Only Knows: Goddesses  is where it failed the most. The story seemed to advance with a somewhat even flow over the first few episodes but as the series developed it slowed down and became very even and ended felling rushed and carelessly produced. I guess that if we had a better understanding of the struggles and evil forces at play along with a longer development of the final battle things could have come across much more coherent. There was way too much time spent on how Keima was going to figure out which one of his conquest had the goddesses in them and in the end it seemed obvious from the opening episode what he needed to do.

In the long run I know that the fans of the series are going to love this. It has everything they would want. That being said, I am a fan and thought the plot had some real opportunities to be a home run. I just feel like they got off track and by the time they realized it the story was over and thing just happened at that point.

This is a buy for the hard core fans and I would recommend that if you are interested in the series that you start from season one and work your way up.