= Minimal Spoilers: There will be some references to traits of the story/plot and characteristics of characters in the anime, but no details that would spoil the enjoyment of the anime will be included. =
//There are only two professions in the whole world that give meaning to those who have died and what have been lost... They're writers and detectives. Writers are the only ones able to revive what was lost through their visions. Detectives are the only ones able to dig up the grave and bring back lost information. But the information us detectives dig up is nothing more than the truth as recorded in Heaven's Memo Pad.// - Alice
If I were to pick a word to describe my feelings towards Kamisama No Memochou, it would probably be ‘ambivalence’- I love it and hate it at the same time.
So what exactly is Kamisama No Memochou:It’s the Only NEET Thing to Do or Heaven’s Memo Pad (HMP) all about? To summarise, it is a mystery anime that follows a male protagonist and a group of self-proclaimed NEETS and their loli leader, Alice, as they solve a series of interlinked mysteries that happen in their city-each mystery, varying in implication and scale. Despite all the sarcasm that this plot has generated, I found myself intrigued with what an anime which amalgamates NEETs and Mystery would be like and how the producers would intertwine and portray these elements.
HMP’s mysteries can be described as focusing on revealing the background stories of individuals-who are unable or unwilling to share their perspective. Instead of relying on plot twists, complicated foreshadowing and epic cliff hangers, HMP decides to throw all those away and present less convoluted stories that feel more ‘realistic and plausible’. Oddly enough, I found myself enjoying the refreshingly (relatively) relaxed pace of the mysteries. For once, I could actually focus on the stories, rather than divide my attention between watching and theorising at the same time. While the mysteries can be a bit inconsistent at times, with the second last arc feeling like a filler, they are mostly enjoyable, especially the last mystery which timely speeds up the pace for a climax to emerge. While these mysteries aren’t masterpieces, they were great and really interesting to follow.
Unfortunately though, there were several downfalls in the anime that made these mysteries less enjoyable. The first would be that the anime relies on coincidences, which seem out of place, far too often. Moreover, while the mysteries themselves were great, the linkages between them were weak. More often than not, HMP relies on one of the mentioned coincidences to transition from one mystery to the next. The transition is about as smooth as a transition from a discussion about a serious mystery to one about cookies based on the coincidence that someone found a cookie. More infuriatingly, the anime seems to have a habit of forgetting mysteries after the transition has been made. Hardly will it ever reference past events in the anime, and even when it does, the reference is in the form of the superficial return of a few side characters. It truly would have been nice for something gleaned from one of the earlier mysteries to have had an impact on one of the later ones.
Transition aside, one of the biggest issues with the anime in my opinion is that the role of the theme of NEETs in this anime is superficial and feels as though it was lacquered on in a desperate bid to make the anime stand out from other mystery anime such as Gosick. (which also coincidentally has a loli detective and aired the season before) Had it not been for the characters’ consistent self-proclamation that they were ‘NEETs’ and Alice’s contentious declaration that she was not just any ordinary detective, but a ‘NEET detective’ almost every episode, the aspect of NEETs would be completely unidentifiable in this anime. This is especially so since the detectives who call themselves NEETs seem to be defying the very definition of the term, “Not in Education, Employment, or Training,” by actively engaging in detective work and in Major’s case, attending university. Whether this actually counts as misnomering or not is up to you to decide, but that the anime failed to provide a meaningful perspective on the life of NEETs in spite of it promoting itself as having NEET themes is truly disappointing and annoying. At the end of anime, little or nothing has been revealed about what motivated the characters to become NEETs in the first place or their plans for the future-some aspects that I expected to be addressed from an anime with ‘NEET’ in its subtitle.
A similar disappointment was felt towards Alice, the poster girl of the anime. While having a character with unique traits is often welcomed as creativity, having the traits added in a slipshod manner only leaves a sour taste that should never have existed in the first place. In the case of Alice, her quirk is that she is an extremely precocious, bratty, easily embarrassed, loli, NEET detective cum hacker who loves soft toys and Dr Pepper. (that’s a mouthful) Unfortunately for her and us though, she doesn’t have much going for her apart from these superficial features. Moreover to the viewers misfortune, the way that these traits are portrayed is jarring and blatant. Imagine our loli detective talking about a mystery one second and then asking for a Dr Pepper the next, before proceeding to do some hacking and then arrogantly correcting the main character for calling her a detective instead of a NEET detective- this is how the producers decided to remind us of Alice’s ‘unique’ character over and over again. Charming isn’t it? You can’t really get less subtle than that. These forced characteristics genuinely made Alice really unnatural, shallow and unlikable as a character to me. Even without them though, Alice’s character like her stature suffers from a lack of development throughout the anime.
Apart from Alice, the other NEETs in the anime don’t really have any development or depth either. Almost nothing about about these characters-why they chose to become NEETs and how they met each other-was shared. While I wasn’t as bothered by their shallowness as I was with Alice’s since they are side characters after all, I feel that some of the time spent on the dr pepper dialogues could have at least been reallocated to character development for these guys. Moving onto the other side of the spectrum of uniqueness, we have Narumi, our generic male lead who in spite of getting some development was rather forgettable. Some more time could have also been spent on his background to make it as good as those of the characters which the mysteries focused on.
Apart from these character weaknesses, the characters in HMP also generally suffer from poor dialogues, which feel forced and unnatural at times.
However, while Alice and the majority of her gang were really disappointing, there were some unexpected gems in the character aspect of this anime. The first would be Ayaka, who in spite of her short screen time did manage to bring some emotion to the otherwise phlegmatic anime with her interesting story and role in the anime. The second gem, or group of gems rather, would be the gang members, who added a touch of humour to the anime. The last in my opinion would be Souichirou, Hinamura, the avuncular yet brute leader of the yakuza who really stole the spotlight. Not only does he admittedly get a better background story than our main characters, but also unlike them, has a unique and likeable personality which is not blatant. In all honesty, I think he deserves that spot on the poster picture more than Alice. Then again though, sales for the anime would have dropped if it had a middle aged yakuza on the cover rather than a loli detective.
Production-wise. The animation is for the most part attractive, albeit but generic. However, there are moments when I felt the animation does seem clumsy or overly dramatic though (particularly the last scene of the op when the camera zooms towards Alice’s eyes and the very last scene of the anime). The music of the anime, however, is only decent. The OST gets it’s job done, but isn’t really anything worth noting. By the end, I probably skipped the OP and ED at least 50% of the time.
Overall, while HMP does have some great story elements and background stories, it also has a number of glaring flaws, which detracted from my enjoyment of the anime. Had the anime been less superficial in its a slipshod attempt to present itself as different, I believe I would have enjoyed it a lot more. I would still give this anime a recommendation, but only to those who are new to mysteries or those who want to try a slightly less intense and less confusing mystery anime. Those who like this anime may also like Hyouka, which is even more casual paced and even more beautiful than HMP, and Gosick, which also has a loli detective, but follows a different plot structure of having several small arcs which piece together in a grand scheme.
- Forgotten_Memo
