The World God Only Knows – The Endgame Approaches! Can Keima Take Ayumi Home?

Hello,

Today we take a look at the manga series The World God Only Knows, in which the end of the last Goddess hunt has quickly been approaching.

This has been one of the more difficult captures of the series, since most of Keima’s rules seem to have rapidly broken down around him. Yet he still maintains that sticking to a plan is the best way to complete the capture, which I had a lot of trouble believing until now.

I thought Yui was supposed to be the one who plays against Keima, but it turns out Ayumi knows how to play hardball as well. When you go up to a teenage girl literally riding a white horse and declaring your love for them, that girl would normally collapse in a squeeing heap. Or run the hell away from the creepy stalker.

Instead of that, Ayumi throws Keima’s words back at him and decides that if he’s really serious, he’ll be willing to marry her. This is where the guy would probably run from the creepy stalker, but Keima is just as serious, so what we get is a series of continuously escalating offers between the two, culminating in Keima pulling a white dress and tuxedo out of thin air and Ayumi asking him to say he loves her.

This is quite the progress from the girl who was once captured in the opening chapter. In shonen standards, that would qualify her as a recurring mook at best. The simple fact that she can play the Capturing God to a standstill is very impressive, and not something I would have expected when the Goddess storylines began.

If I have any sort of concern, it’s with how this chapter ended. There are very few occasions where interrupting a love confession with a cliffhanger has worked out. In particular, I remember a chapter of Nisekoi that ended mid-confession, so I knew it would get stopped the next chapter. If it were real, simply showing the full confession would make for a much better cliffhanger.

At the same time, the chapter feels like the end of the arc is going to happen soon. Back when Keima and Chihiro were together, it felt romantic and everything, but it was never really climactic. Here is where the real “now or never” feeling comes in, because it’s difficult to visualize any other kind of climax after this. After all of Keima’s previous failures, where else could we possibly go after this?

The only way for this scene to get more climactic is if Vintage decided to crash the party. I’m sure the next confrontation is inevitable, but I don’t know if it will happen before or after the last goddess awakens. If it’s before, then I sincerely hope that Keima can turn even that scenario to his advantage, since it took so much work to get Ayumi this far.

Concluding, The World God Only Knows is once again showing why it was, and remains to this day, one of my favourite ongoing series. Sometimes I wonder how it’s possible, but it still knows how to get better over time.

See you soon,

feal87 Yerocha