jigglyppuff8:
The premise of this showed a lot of promise. Those without a real functioning place in normal society work together using their respective skills to solve cases for their respective clients, especially those where a life has been taken. It is the NEET thing to do after all. That’s the end of the good parts of this show however.
As mentioned previously, the colorful cast of characters gave this show the potential to be something very worthwhile: the straight A college drop-out with knowledge of advanced technologies and war strategies, a gambling boxer with connections to the police, a playboy who is able to extract information from any woman he can, a member of the yakuza with an army of able bodied men ready to protect and serve him, and Alice, a girl who has a penchant for deducing the words of the deceased and is also the titular character of this show. Enter Narumi, the most average protagonist in the world. He has absolutely no traits to set him apart from everyone else. None. He somehow gets swept up by Alice and co. to assist them in their endeavors. What one would expect from this kind of series is lots of creative solutions and ways to gather evidence from the looks of this colorful group. However, the cases in this show tend to be more dramatic and personal to the characters involved. This somewhat works against the series as it trades the mystery genre for the drama genre. A good mystery would have minimal drama but instead focus on the task at hand: apprehending the criminal and revealing the truth using hard facts. Kamisama no Memochou tends to be more sentimental in the cases it solves; using methods that not only reveal methods, but backstory as well. For most mysteries, a motive would be sufficient in determining the character’s personality. While more detail in the form of a backstory does allow for more details of the character’s life to be known, using it in a series where that character would at most appear until the end of that arc causes a feeling of wasted emotional investment. That aside though, the drama in the series overall is average. Some tense moments, but nothing really major until the final arc of the anime. Additionally, the colorful cast of side characters are hardly utilized. The viewers are told that X character did N action, but rarely do we see X character doing N action, further distancing this series from the mystery genre as the viewer feels less engaged in the recovery of evidence. Not that evidence matters in the first place since Alice always seems to solve everything on a whim anyway. There’s also something to be said about how Alice seems to be all lovestruck towards Narumi for no reason either. J.C. Staff just loves their harem characters.
That being said, Kamisama no Memochou is a fairly good series that features drama and mystery. While the last arc was the shining part of the show (as it should be), I’m not sure if I can really say that the ride was worth it.
