People love dating sims, right? Well, no one loves them more than Keima Katsuragi, who is so good at them that he is renowned among the nerds as "The God of Conquests". He's never met a virtual girl he can't woo, which draws him to the attention of Elsie, a demon from hell.
She has a slight problem, in that evil spirits have been escaping hell, jumping into girls and slowly turning them evil, while magnifying their personality quirks. The only way to free them of the possession? Making them fall in love and seal it with a kiss.
Unfortunately, Elsie only knows Keima's reputation as a god of conquest, not the reality of his shut-in-ness, and his preference for 2D girls over 3D. Which means that she almost immediately regrets bonding their souls together. Though he regrets it even more when she tells him that she's going to be living with him as his father's illegitimate daughter. (And with his "single, yet still attractive mother". She doesn't take the unexpected daughter well.)
Of course, this utter lack of interest in real girls means that Keima only has one approach to them. Pretend he's living a dating sim, and attack the problem head on.
All the usual game tropes apply. He needs to try every path through the possible choices, carefully select the appropriate approach for a given stereotype and emotionally manipulate people into kissing him.
That is the slightly weird core to this. Effectively, in every episode (or spread out over two or three), he has to approach a girl as a conquest, work out the weak point that he can push on, and convince her to fall in love with him.
This could be quite an involved psychological horror with a different approach. However, it decides to play it relatively safe and ensure that the girls are all better off after their little escpade.
They don't even remember the trauma of having demonically implanted psychological quirks due to the magic memory wipes available. No way that's reminiscent of anything dodgy, right?
However, it actually ends up being a fairly impressive bit of work. The romantic plots give a fair amount of sincerity to the people involved, such that it never feels exploitative or unnecessarily pervy. And there's no ecchi involved. The "sister" really does behave as a sister, and it's mostly a dating sim spoof rather than a romance show.
And the main episodes about conquering particular girls are occasionally interrupted by episodes focusing on the demon world, or Keima's obsession with games, just to break it up a little.
If you're a fan of dating sims, I suspect you'll enjoy it immensely. I mostly leave them to the Girl, but I still had fun watching this.
Recommended.
Tagged: Anime Comedy Otaku Video gaming Romance DVD Dubbed