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⏎The World God Only Knows ⏎ Rating: 4.5 ⏎ Keima Katsuragi fancies himself a god, no, THE god of a world he knows so well he refuses to spend any time outside of it, giving reality the brush-off at every turn. No matter the character type, no matter the scenario, Keima can conquer any 2-dimensional girl. He's planted his flag in the hearts of every fictional character in nearly every published game, to the point of running out of games to play, so he limits his interactions with the real world to answering e-mails from irers seeking advice on their own favorite bishoujo games. His classmates hardly think of him as a god, of course, and more like a four-eyed, creepy otaku. That suits Keima just fine. Reality has no time for him, and he feels exactly the same way. He particularly can't stand real girls, which are confusing and poorly-written. ⏎ Needless to say, he gets a wakeup call in the form of an unusually cute demon from Hell named Elci who swoops in and flies him away to fulfill a contract he unwittingly signed through e-mail. The netherworld seems to have caught wind of Keima's girl-capturing skills and challenged him through e-mail…a message he figured was just another game. Unbeknownst to him, he agreed to evict rogue spirits from young girls’ hearts by taking up the empty place himself, and making women fall in love with him. It should be an easy task for such an arrogant Don Juan, right? Besides, if Keima refuses, his head will be struck from his shoulders, so he had better hope real girls are a little more like the ones in his video games than he thinks. ⏎ So…demons only communicate through the internet? They had no idea Keima was nothing but a pasty nerd with a big ego? Maybe they spend all their time haunting 4chan, I don't know. ⏎ It's not really important how we got here because the important thing is that this premise is played out perfectly. I can't bear to spoil any of it, and that has nothing to do with the show having any revolutionary twists or incredible insights, for as of yet, it has none. It's a very simple, uplifting pleasure and if there's some statement to be made about Keima eventually coming to with reality or Elci falling for the human she's bound to despite her job, it's yet to be made…the possibilities are still completely open. ⏎ The World God Only Knows is funny without trying, taking even the easiest jokes and using just the right timing to make them incredibly funny. (Keima's first meeting with the athletic firecracker he must conquer is a good example.) The animation is not anything special but it's used to its strongest extent, playing with the lines between reality and the game and generally bursting with color and charm without overdoing it. (Unlike another recent show, Samurai Girls, which is all gimmick and no finesse: a pandering mess.) Most impressive, however, is not what the series does, but what it doesn't do. The girls making Keima's reality, well, a living hell, are charming and attractive without having the camera shoot up their skirts or brush their boobs every chance it gets. In fact, I don't know that this episode displayed any blatant fanservice. It just brandishes a charisma all its own, and if the first episode is only a setup to better things? It's sure to conquer many hearts. ⏎ The World God Only Knows is available streaming on Crunchyroll. ⏎ Yumeiro Patisserie Professional ⏎ Rating: 3 ⏎ Yumeiro Patisserie...