Kamisama no Memochou Half Season Review

Arghblargh somebody just crawled through my blog on some reading rampage. I’ll bet he now knows all of my deepest, darkest secrets that I keep obscure by posting them online for everybody to read. After all, anybody who wants to find my secrets won’t possibly look online at my personal blog, right?

Anyways, whoever you are, IDENTIFY YOURSELF! Or I shall BLOCK your IP address because… uh, I can like totally see your IP address and stuff. Yeah. Trust me. You can’t see it because you didn’t buy the WordPress Super Duper Awesome Crazy Top Secret Value Package Bundle Deal, which only becomes available after you purchase the WordPress Value Bundle. Don’t believe me? See for yourself and waste $99 in the process!

So, why am I reviewing it now? Because NANOWRIMO GOTTA RUSH GOTTA RUSH GOTT-oh phew it’s the long weekend.

Well, after finishing first impressions, I figured it was time to, y’know, actually start watching fall shows, only to find that there was no more space on my disk. I had only two options left – to transfer all of my ten gigabytes of anime to another disk, or to marathon through four episodes of KamiMemo and write a two thousand word post about it. It was obvious which would be easier to do, and so here I am, writing this post. For those who don’t understand how writing a post frees up disk space… neither do I. It just happens.

Anyways, I chose this show because IT SUCKS.

Here’s an ordered list of why, because lists are cool and fun and everybody likes lists.

1. Narumi

What an idiot. She meant a detective case, not a case of Dokupe. She wasn’t even speaking to you. And you didn’t even give her a case of Dokupe, you gave her a can. CAN anybody be stupider (no pun intended, my caps lock is just positioned treacherously near my ‘a’ key)?

Here, let’s structure this as a test because tests are cool and fun and everybody likes tests.

Part A. You are a weaponless, spineless, normal teenager who has just transferred to a new school.

1. A Yakuza boss wants to kill somebody. You have critical information about the boss’s target. What do you do?

a) Don’t get involved.
b) Talk to the police and help with the arrest of the Yakuza boss.
c) Bribe the boss for your information.
d) Withhold the information from the boss while marching into his room and proclaiming that you have such information, and that you are going to meet with the person the boss wishes to kill the next morning.
e) Give him the information and swear eternal loyalty.

2. You meet a shady group of unemployed people, including a gambling boxer, an armed military Major, a male prostitute, and an underaged girl who spent her entire life staring at illuminated rectangles. They are involved with a murder. What do you do?

a) Run away.
b) Help them find jobs.
c) Participate in their activities.
d) Walk away.
e) Report them to the police.

3. Your employer is a selfish, immature, unrealistic brat who wants you to do her every bidding. What do you do?

a) Continue being controlled by your employer, as you have no self-will.
b) Kick her in the head with a reverse spinning roundhouse headbutt punch and go to school.
c) Instead of being only controlled by your employer, join a Yakuza group so that you can also be controlled by them.
d) Invest in self-augmentation technology and become a robot at the meagre cost of your self-conciousness, since you barely had any in the first place.
e) Punch her in the face with an underhand backflip elbow kick and find a new job at a typical Japanese corporation, where your life will be dictated by your new employer who could have total control over your entire physical, emotional, social, romantic, and intellectual life… if he cared enough, but he won’t.

4. You meet an underaged girl who behaves like a child and becomes flushed during your approaches. What do you do?

a) Take her to a psychologist to see if her mental condition is alright.
b) Continue flirting with her and eventually form a romantic relationship.
c) Ignore her until she matures and finds someone else to play with.
d) Take her to a doctor to see if her physical condition is alright.
e) Take her to a gynaecologist to see if her sexual condition is alright, as she exhibits frequent sex flushes during your visits (which you believe are not sexual in nature).

Part B. You are the leader of a notorious Yakuza gang, famed for your gruesome tortures.

5. A teenage acquaintance notices you at a fabrics shop. What do you do?

a) Greet him and make light conversation while ringing up your purchase.
b) Avoid all contact with him and slide out a side door, merchandise in hand.
c) Greet him, finish your purchase, and head out for tea.
d) Take him by the collar and strangle him for information behind the store.
e) Pull out a gun and kill everybody in the store, greet him, and then make light conversation.

6. A childhood friend talks about your past, when you were a vulnerable, weak, child. What do you do?

a) Burst into a laugh.
b) Blush childishly and deny his accusations.
c) Nothing.
d) Burst into a car, and drive into his face.
e) Punch him in the face.

Part C. You are the director of a recently aired Japanese animated cartoon.

7. You are in charge of the direction. What do you do?

a) Copy Gosick by making the female lead an short, insufferable, ‘cute’, immature, logically intelligent hikikomori who solves crimes with the power of refusing to shower.
b) Copy Sacred Seven by putting the main character in the Gardening Club, which never ever does anything, ever again.
c) Copy Durarara!! by making the main character an Internet-savvy, know-it-all, physically weak Gary Stu with Ryuugamine’s face who can observe movements/speech/mannerisms/surroundings to predict attacks/ethnicity/personality/explosions.
d) Attempt to copy Speaker for the Dead by making the heroine uncover her personal copy of what she believes to be the possible truth of one unsolved situation that may be a crime based around the intentions of one part of one person’s professional life. Maybe.
e) Copy Fractale by peppering philosophical musings of the meaning of life inside plot holes, without actually stuffing the plot holes, as peppers cannot stuff holes.

8. You are informed that your cartoon’s primary objective is to solve mysteries. What do you do?

a) Create your own mysteries, in which in a surprising twist, Alice finds out that she herself was the culprit.
b) Hire an experienced private detective to patch up plot holes in the light novel’s mysteries.
c) Lay a thin layer of philosophical quandaries under the mysteries in the hopes that somebody will realize after fifty years and start a cult to analyze its depth.
d) Hire an experienced director to patch up directional holes in the light novel’s mysteries.
e) Focus on pantyshots, blushes, and tantrums of the underaged female lead.

9. You must come up with a new, innovative way to tell the story, with cutting-edge modern technologies available at hand. What do you do?

a) Use flashbacks to events that happened fifteen seconds ago every two minutes.
b) Copy Durarara!! and show different facets of life through the eyes of a bumbling idiot.
c) Use the advanced capabilities of Windows 7 by copying its Windows Aero theme onto every computer screen in the series to assert your cartoon’s technological dominance over cartoons made a year ago.
d) Delegate responsibility to your two ten-year-old sons, and grant them full control over the process.
e) Use the power of MikuMikuDance to animate cars driving into the distance every ten minutes to showcase your studio’s electronic might over cartoons made before the advent of MikuMikuDance.

Part D. You are J.C. Staff.

10. What do you do?

a) Die.
b) Go bankrupt.
c) Make Index Season III.
d) Die. Twice.
e) Continue making shows which focus on a lead female with fat thighs who doesn’t know English and crams for her upcoming English exam in the last minutes of the episode with giant floating flashcards who attempts to be moé but can’t be due to her eyes not being large enough and her fat thighs, the result of being a neckbeard who drinks pop and never exercises all day.

Oh, I forgot. This section was about Narumi. Sorry, I had a lot to say about he had a lot to say about size.

They’re trying too hard to make Narumi pander to otaku. There have been mistakes in the past, where people have made a character similar to actual otaku, which then bombed. No, that’s not what you do. You make characters similar to what otaku think of themselves.

We know that actual otaku are creepy, socially estranged, physically powerless, technologically-inefficient cowards. Otaku don’t think of themselves as that. Sure, they know that they’re socially abnormal, but that’s only because other people don’t talk to them. If somebody talked to them, and say, invited them to join a gardening club, of course they’ll talk normally! Or so they think. But that’s what matters.

Sure, they’re physically weak, but if they got involved with the Yakuza and had private training lessons, of course they’d becoming strong! Or so they think. They think that their site designing skills for freeanimehentaiporn.jp was really top-notch. They think that they’re technologically proficient, and can easily do anything online. They think that if somebody attacked them, no, they wouldn’t back down! After all, they think that they may not be strong, but their superior intelligence will allow them to detect attacks and counter them before they hit. And of course, they don’t think that they’re perfect in all their judgements, and make mistakes once in a while. Of course, they’re never big mistakes, but they still happen.

That’s exactly who Narumi is. The person all otaku think they are. Not what they actually are, not what they strive to be. What they think they are.

It’s a brilliant marketing strategy.

It’s also as fucking disgusting as the fanservice J.C. Staff decides would be a great idea to put everywhere.

“…I actually do have asthma…”

2. Alice

If MyPeopleIMostWantToPunchInTheFaceList.com existed, I’d make an account and put Alice at the very top. There’s nothing more pretentious than labelling yourself a NEET. It’s pretentious if you label yourself that while being a NEET looking for work. It’s even more pretentious if you label yourself that without even trying to get a job. It’s just fucking disgusting if you label your fucking firm that. You’re working for your firm. Don’t label it a NEET organization. Does labelling a NEET organization make it more prestigious? Does it help rake in prospective clients? Does it properly describe the organization? Or do you call it that simply to be a pretentious weeaboo?

She’s a perfect conflict between logical intelligence and emotional intelligence. Perfect because it’s obvious what the result is. Emotional intelligence more than compensates for logical intelligence. If you’re a logical genius but with a personality that causes everybody to hate you, you’re not going to be around for long. If you’re logically unsound, but emotionally mature, you can hide your stupidity, so that at least you won’t get in anybody’s way. It becomes a non-issue, compared to the genius’s attitude, which cannot be masked by his intelligence. Compare Alice to one of the Fourth’s subordinates. Which would you trust more? Which would be more useful?

What’s so special about her, anyways? Does she even help solve mysteries?

Disgusting.

3. The OP

…Oh wait, it’s the only good part of the show. It’s actually pretty awesome. Pushes the score up from a 2/10 to maybe a 3/10. Maybe I’ll keep it a 2/10 in the vein of every other J.C. Staff show.

Yes, I’m serious. The OP is pretty awesome (you were asking about that, right?). In fact, the opening bit types out (how clever!) kamisamanomemochou on a QWERTY keyboard.

A QWERTY keyboard? Alice isn’t as technologically proficient as she thought she was, huh, not using Dvorak and all that. Do you know how fast I can type with Dvorak? I can type at FORTY-TWO WORDS A MINUTE. That’s a lot more than how fast I type on QWERTY, which is… uh, 111 wpm. Never mind…

P.S. At least mèo actually means ‘cat’.