Kami nomi zo Shiru Sekai – Ep 9

Screens:

Summary:

One night Elcea makes Keima a cake for a snack; which leads to a huge commotion since it’s still devil food. The next day Keima is still miffed at Elcea and tells Elcea that she needs to study up on common sense. Keima continues saying that partners these days need to be intelligent and quirky. Elcea replies that makes Keima the perfect partner then, but Keima tells her she’s suppose to be the partner. Elcea defends herself by saying she’s received good grades when studying the human world, though the last thing she studied was when Japan was open to the West by Matthew C. Perry. Keima tells her to immediately read up on the human world.

Following Keima’s advice, Elcea goes to the school library to read up on the human world. The school’s library is huge and Elcea is in awe and gets excited to study up on common sense, but Elcea gets sidetracked when she sees a picture of a fire truck in a book. Elcea asks the librarian, Shiomiya Shiori, about finding books on fire trucks. Unfortunately she’s busy reading a book; when she finally comes too she’s still a little spaced out. Elcea finally asks her if there are any other books on fire trucks, and Shiori pauses for a moment and tells Elcea to come back after school. Elcea’s runaway spirit detector goes off after Shiori gets nervous

After school, Elcea drags Keima with her to the library to show him his next target. Keima comments that librarian characters are so common in games that he won’t have the will to even try to capture her if she’s not a perfect example of a librarian. They meet Shiori who’s pushing a cart full of books on fire trucks. Shiori tells them which books are about fire trucks, and which are books with fire trucks in them. Keima comments that their school’s library is pretty advanced for the index to be so detailed. Shiori looks at Keima and starts thinking about how she didn’t use the index as she’s read every book in the library. She starts to over think and realizes that it was odd to bring a cart full of books and thinks it would’ve been better to have just brought 2-3 books instead.

Shiori walks back to her desk without saying anything, and Elcea comments that she doesn’t seem to talk much. Shiori thinks that it’s fine not being able to communicate with people as long as she has books. She feels safe in her castle of books; for Shiori, books are a gateway to a new world where you could be anyone, books are art, books are cultural, books are miracles, books are eras, books are life, in short books are everything to Shiori.

The next day on the way to school, Elcea is going over Shiori’s data with Keima and asks him how he plans to approach her since she doesn’t talk much. Keima tells her that for librarian characters, you can hear their inner voice if you listen carefully. Keima elaborates by saying library girls tend to be quiet, but they’re always absorbed in thought. Elcea continues asking how he plans to hear her thoughts, and Keima tells her he can always hear her thoughts as they’re always in the captioned text in the game. Elcea points out to Keima that this is reality and Keima deems the capture impossible.

Meanwhile Shiori is procrastinating on a couple that’s openly flirting in the library and is offended by it. Eventually Shiori gets a list of books that are to be disposed of, and sadly goes to collect the books. Shiori bids her farewell to the books as she collects them. Shiori tries to reach for a book that’s too high and slips; fortunately Keima catches both the book and her. Shiori’s heart starts pounding and she starts wondering why Keima is here, but thinks to herself that she needs to thank him and she starts procrastinating on how to thank him. She finally says thank you, but her tongue slips as she says “ariga-ron” (a combination of “arigato” and “economics” from the title of a book she’s holding “Principals of Economics”).

Opinion:

I want to start out by saying, they did a great job casting Hanazawa Kana to play Shiori. She has that quiet girl voice and she’s no stranger to playing a Bungaku Shōjo . Truly she’s  a strong choice for the role. That aside, this episode follows chapters 13 and 14 of the manga and as always it’s done faithfully and overall well done. I forgot how big Maijima High’s library was; I’d probably place it at 2nd place in terms of size with Mahora’s library taking 1st. This week’s illustration is of Shiori (naturally) I recognize the style, but I can’t remember from where. If anyone knows who did this week’s illustration please let me know. It’s been bothering me for a while.What I loved this episode were the inserts, namely the Kanon PSP game commercial. I loved how the Developer name is “Date”  and it was overal super cute and mad me wish I could attend the KamiNomi event on Saturday in Japan. Especially since it involves Kanon! I also loved Keima’s “KamiNomi” in the tone of “KameHame-Ha!”! The series just gets better and better, and it feels lately like the anime and manga are colliding. The last heroine was Kanon and she once again surfaced again in the recent manga chapters. This time Shiori’s the heroine and the chapter 123 of the manga suggests she’s coming back into the story starting ch. 124. I’m just getting more and more psyched for this series and I’m gonna be watching the stream of the KamiNomi event.  Till next time.