- Aspect Ratio: 1.78:1
- Video Codec: AVC/MPEG-4
- Resolution: 1080p/24 (23.976Hz)
- Audio Codec: Japanese & English DTS-HD Master Audio 2.0 Stereo
- Subtitles: English
- Region: A (Region-Locked)
- Rating: TV-14 (D)
- Run Time: 300 Mins
- Discs: 2 (2 x Blu-ray)
- Studio: Sentai Filmworks
- Blu-ray Release Date: January 24, 2012
- List Price: $69.98
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BestBuy.com:
Purchase The World God Only Knows: Season One on Blu-ray at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:3.5/5]
The Series
[Rating:3.5/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:4/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:1/5]
Click thumbnails for high-resolution 1920X1080p screen captures
(All TheaterByte screen captures are lightly compressed with lossy JPEG at 100% quality setting and are meant as a general representation of the content. They do not fully reveal the capabilities of the Blu-ray format)
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The Series
[Rating:3.5/5]
Do we really need another entry in the high school anime genre featuring an isolated teenage boy who is suddenly surrounded by a bevy of cute girls that are all inexplicably attracted to him? No, not really. At first glance, The World God Only Knows seems like it’s going to be average plonk. But the further you get into this humorous and often touching story, you realize, it’s not half-bad, and, actually, rather likable.
The twist in this high school story is that Keima is a boy obsessed with playing dating sims and has no use for the real world or the girls in it. He can conquer any 2D girl, but when he responds to a strange email a cute demon girl from the underworld named Elsie literally drops into his life. Keima is now bound by contractual agreement to work with Elsie to help gather “loose souls” that have entered the bodies of young women in the real world and capture them. If he fails to do so, a new collar that has appeared around his neck will cut off his head; the same fate will befall Elsie.
This situation is at first anathema to Keima who despises the real world and all the girls within it, but soon he comes around to engaging in the differing reality, realizing he can use his highly developed dating sim skills and apply them to this new challenge. The only way for Keima to drive the loose souls from the girls’ bodies is to replace them inside the girls with love for him.
Each girl Keima encounters with a loose soul, thus, has a deep personal issue that must be resolved, for example, one girl is a school librarian who is afraid to speak to others and lives in a world of silence and fantasy, escaping into the stories of her books and her thoughts. Another girl is the orphan of a rich executive recently passed away who is now poor, but still living as a rich girl, afraid to let anyone know of her lot in life. It is these touching tales that make all the difference in what at first appears like another cliché and goofball high school romance anime, but in fact is a more complex, though still humorous series.
Video Quality
[Rating:4/5]
This is a solid 1080p/24 AVC encodement with sharply defined line art and no evidence of aliasing. The overall appearance is sometimes a tad soft, but the image is clean with strong, stable colors.
Audio Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Two lossless stereo soundtracks are provided in DTS-HD Master Audio, the original Japanese and an English dub. I watched with the Japanese track and English subtitles engaged. It is a strong mix with well defined stereo imaging and clean dialogue. High frequencies are natural plus there’s a good amount of lows as well.
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:1/5]
There isn’t much to speak of here as the “music videos” are simply culled from the “Kanon” Pop Idol episodes and everything else is the obligatory stuff that’s not necessarily worth watching.
The supplements:
- Music Videos (1.78:1; 1080p/24; 00:13:19)
- Clean Opening Animation
- Clean Closing Animation
- Disc Credits
The Definitive Word
Overall:
[Rating:3.5/5]
The World God Only Knows takes the high school romance genre and twists it just a bit, making it wholly palatable, unique, and thoroughly enjoyable. Although the series on the whole is still nowhere near revolutionary or groundbreaking, I’m quite confident that many will find a lot to like in this brief and satisfying first season.
Additional Screen Captures
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[amazon-product]B005XB8T54[/amazon-product]
BestBuy.com:
Purchase The World God Only Knows: Season One on Blu-ray at CD Universe
Shop for more Blu-ray titles at Amazon.com
Overall
[Rating:3.5/5]
The Series
[Rating:3.5/5]
Video Quality
[Rating:4/5]
Audio Quality
[Rating:4.5/5]
Supplemental Materials
[Rating:1/5]
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