Kanon's withdrawal from reality continues apace here as she's becoming more uncertain of herself and her following.
What They Say:
...I'm going to turn you into a fan! And so, Kanon sings on the roof for Keima. Keima treats her coldly in an attempt to learn what is troubling her, but Kanon is so hurt that she goes into a state of shock and her body becomes transparent! It appears to be related to the loose soul inside her...but as Elsie looks for information about Kanon, she learns about something that happened in Kanon's past. In the meantime, Kanon's dream concert at Narusawa Seaside Hall is drawing near.
The Review:
Content: (please note that content portions of a review may contain spoilers)
The introduction of Kanon in the previous episode didn't exactly offer up any surprises as we got the whole idol with a loose soul component in her story going. Kanon for her part is fairly predictable with her issues and she takes up the challenge of trying to get Keima to really recognize her when he's very dismissive of flesh and blood idols. His interest in virtual idols is amusing since it is a slow but growing trend and some of what he indicates about their superiority certainly has its merits, and has been explored at length in anime series of the past. With her seeming disappearance at the end of the last episode dealt with at the start, as she's transparent now and not gone, the episode focuses more on Kanon's past instead since she's able to get back on with things.
What isn't a surprise is that a lot of what Kanon deals with is her need to be paid attention to at least on some level. When she does a gig at the local TV station and performs her latest upcoming release single, she gets very thrown off when she see someone in the crowd using their cel phone rather than paying attention to her. It's so noticeable that even Elsie sees it and wonders what the deal is. Kanon has such a need to be given full attention when she performs, and even when she's just going through other things in her normal life, that when someone doesn't during a big moment, it really gets under her skin. That speaks a lot for her personality and some issues she's going to have to face.
Kanon's past and the things that haunt her, with friends and the group she was part of previously in which she can became the star over the others, is the crux of her issue. There are some nice scenes that highlights her back story (which Keima points out in a very self aware way) while he slowly manipulates things to get the end result he wants with her. Kanon has become quite reclusive in her own way since that previous group broke up and her friends disappeared, and not being able to win over Keima when she needs to feel that she can do that with everyone pushes her to the state she's in. It's a slightly odd situation where we watch Keima do his thing to help her and get her back on track, but I'm hard pressed to really find what it is that Keima has done to turn Kanon around and bring her back to reality. Granted, it's all tied up in the game he's playing (with an amusing wrapper around it for playing in the bath) so there's hints to be had there. But as a multi part story, this one feels weak and overdrawn.
In Summary:
The World God Only Knows started off pretty strong and had some good stories to get going with, but the Kanon storyline has really thrown it for a loop. Something about her, her issues and Keima's method of handling it simply isn't clicking for me. There are some fun moments to be had in it, but they're relatively few and far between. Keima is still the more interesting character and it's fun seeing all the little gaming nods made throughout it, but even Elsie loses a few points here for being so idol obsessed. And having seen so many idol based shows and arcs before, there's nothing particularly new here that really draws you in and makes it its own story within this series. And that's unfortunate since Keima's personality, confidence and style allows him to change standard storylines into something a bit more.