Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai: Megami-hen - 6

"My Story"

That was one of the best paced episodes of Megami-hen yet.

I like this conquest for a lot of reasons. Firstly, I like Shiori quite a bit; she’s not as flashy or as dashing as Yui or as strongly individualistic as heroines like Tsukino or Kanon, but she is interesting, and personally I kind of identify with her. I know what it’s like to be hugely shy and to hide behind books as a form of escapism, but I also genuinely love the wonderful freedom that reading gives one, and thus understand Shiori’s rather quiet personality. She’s definitely the sort of girl that constitutes the usual library girl trope, but she’s also very endearing, since she’s one of the few heroines whose capture is mostly seen through her own eyes. Perhaps that’s what leads to my second point, and that’s the point that Shiori’s capture is one of the most romantic of the Goddess Arc. It’s not hugely elegant or anything mind blowing, but Shiori’s sense of romanticism and Keima’s good sense to win her over by inspiring her definitely lead to a more charming and less dramatic capture than usual, though by no means less entertaining because of it. Perhaps it’s because this is a simpler capture than usual, in which Keima simply supplies Shiori’s already ample imagination and she does most of the rest herself, but it’s such a cute capture that it’s no wonder Shiori is among the more popular KamiNomi girls, her hugely popular voice actress aside.

I do like that Keima decides to go with a bit of a crazy approach; instead of denying his crossdressing in Yui’s capture, he uses it as a shock factor in order to help Shiori’s novel come along (noted, getting your significant other to crossdress is 100% motivational, fufu) and he pretty much tells her about his circumstances, omitting certain details of course, even if she thinks he’s a bit crazy for it. But for the most part, this is Shiori’s time to shine, and her imagination does most of the actual work here, except for when she requires a nudge in the right direction. I like that about Shiori, and it’s really kind of true that one’s own sense of romanticism can propel your feelings in one direction or the other based on small stimuli in the Real. Her novel may not have been all that much of an actual novel, but it did allow her to finally open herself up and face her feelings in a more tangible way than she had been previously. Perhaps it’s not all that much of a romance as it is a story about growing out of her shell, but even that lends to romance, and her feelings for Keima are definitely what allows her to face herself more openly than ever before.