The best thing The World God Only Knows has going for it is confusion. With its anti-social protagonist and dating-simulator slant, the series can't make up its mind as to whether it's an acerbic take on the two dimensional approach to dating-simulators, or a parody of the spate of story-reset-repeat visual novel adaptations that have spawned recently. Equally though, it could end up as neither and result in bland drivel that the first three episodes skirt dangerously close to.
It all starts so promisingly with Keima who, despite being obnoxious and reclusive, somehow isn't instantly repulsive - likely the effect of his dandy cravat. After a bubbly spirit girl drops into his life the story spanks along and seems to eschew common staples like the moving in ritual or the transferred into school ritual. Then the first episode ends with the girl transferring into his school and the next episode starts with her moving into his house. The series doesn't so much ignore genre tropes as delay them, then air them half apologetically.
Soul Link is absolute, unmitigated dross. It fails on all levels to entertain, engage, or even hold interest beyond the few minutes of morbid curiosity it takes to realise what uninspiring mediocrity it is. It has neither the aesthetics, the intelligence or the big names to let the series be even passable and each episode ends up being twenty minutes of utter drivel where one feels they've lost far more than they've gained by watching it.
overlooking the fact that a hardened terrorist organisation employs a diminutive, top-heavy girl in hot-pants
Liberally adapted from an erotic visual novel by Navel, Soul Link doesn't even have the decency to integrate fan-service or any kind of racy content; the best the bargain-basement visuals can come up with is the leather-clad dominatrix masquerading as an antagonist and a mercenary with breasts which look like they've been badly modelled after a Madonna video. With no naughtiness in sight, the series is left to scratch around in the dirt and try and come up with some kind of manufactured drama which, ultimately, the characters are too incompetent to do anything about.
I'm sure like many others I was enthralled by the story that the final episode of School Days had been indefinitely postponed due to a supposedly violent ending and its likeness to a real-world killing. Not one to pass up on controversy, I queued up the series expecting it to be a fluffy, real-world version of Shuffle! or perhaps akin to Kimi ga Nozomu Eien; what I didn't expect was an unflinching, overly-dramatic portrayal of the depths of teenage decrepitude.
the series' H-game roots are only evident in the amount of sexual deviance present
The first episode of this petite twelve episode series is as mediocre and clichéd as I expected: introverted loner Makoto takes a liking to a girl he sees on the train, female best friend tries to help him get together with her while secretly having the warm-and-fuzzies for him herself. Rolling my eyes and switching off my sensibilities I began to place bets on the most promising axe-wielding female: perhaps the fun-size, silent one is actually a dark-horse in all of this. It took less than half the series to convince me that ending with violence is just one of the punches that School Days will deliver.
