Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai (which moonlights on weekends as The World That Only God Knows or The World God Only Knows, depending on who you ask) is a manga about a guy who wears a cravat for no apparent reason. Now, that in itself makes it worth reading, I think. It’s a proven fact that cravats are far manlier than the common necktie — they’re so manly, in fact, that certain non-profit organizations exist to promote their survival in a tie-centric society.

Though the cravat is clearly the main character here, it happens to be worn by one Keima Katsuragi, who, thanks to his bragging on the internet, is recruited by the forces of Hell to round up escaped evil spirits hiding in the hearts of young women by luring said young women into falling in love with him. The problem lies in that Keima’s online bragging applies only to his uncanny skill at clearing ren-ai games, and that real girls care as much for him as he cares for them, which isn’t very much. In a nutshell, we’ve got a story about a hopeless otaku and his cute (moe, rather) female demon companion manipulating the emotions of teenage girls for the greater good, and it somehow manages not to be harem romance. That’s impressive in itself.

Even more impressive, though, is the sheer reach of Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai’s story: at times it seems to attempt commentary on everything, or at least everything the otaku label might entail. Metafiction it is, certainly, but I can’t shake the feeling that its goal is the presentation of an outright metanarrative of the subculture, a light-hearted but thorough investigation of the fandom proper — it’s a fictional, graphical version of our blogosphere, if you will. It’s entirely possible, if not likely, that I’m tossing all its elements into a basket of my own weaving and evaluating them as a whole when they logically shouldn’t be evaluated thus — but hey, I’m enjoying it all the more for doing so.

KNzSS is ever conscious of the artistic tradition to which it belongs, as evidenced by the girls Keima woos — a tsunderekko, an idol with Miyako-like self-esteem problems, and others — and by Keima’s approaches to these girls, all of whom he wins over using his vast store of ren-ai knowledge. While the spirit-possessed targets of Keima’s benevolent machinations may be “real” in the context of the manga, each is a very obvious play upon a character type with which the audience is probably familiar. It’s ironic, really, that Keima shuns flesh-and-blood females when so many of those around him act like the characters in his games. Being the unwitting protagonist, Keima remains blissfully ignorant of the fact that the very kinds of girls he so appreciates in his escapist medium of choice are those causing him so many problems in the real world. His core issue, then, isn’t that the girls around him are real; it’s that they aren’t, and that fictional girls are much easier to handle in fictional contexts than in reality.

As the title of the manga indicates, Keima (the “Capturing God”), with his singular knowledge of the ren-ai world, is actually the most qualified candidate for the job he’s been recruited to do, whether he knows it or not. And, as the consequences for failure include beheading, his devotion to the otaku lifestyle, or to one kind of otaku lifestyle, literally saves his neck. To me, it seems like a nod toward art’s function as a means of keeping beleaguered human beings sane; after all, how many of us entered the fandom as escapists? Given his attitude of general distaste toward reality, Keima seems to fall into that category.

But when the girls who surround Keima fit the fictive personality types he idealizes, how are we to justify his distaste to begin with? Is he aware, on some level, that moe fantasies don’t translate well into reality? He never considers this overtly, but are we to take it as a testament to the real-world irrelevance and inherent escapism of moe character types? I could be overgeneralizing, but that seems an odd message for a shounen manga, of all things, to convey.

With that in mind, let’s account for Elsee, who is, for all intents and purposes, a moe hurricane. When pressed to choose an agent to recruit Keima for their bizarre mission, to accompany him until said mission is complete, and to share his fate if he fails, the bureaucrats of Hell pick this one:

…Not the most obvious choice, perhaps. After all, the combined fate of the Earth and its afterlife is at stake. When all manner of large, intimidating demons (and such demons do exist, we come to find out) could have whipped Keima into shape with a word and demanded his servitude at the cost of his immortal soul, why is Keima’s companion an inept janitor of the underworld in the form of a human girl (and remember, Keima isn’t the least bit receptive to human girls)? KNzSS being comedic has something to do with it, I suspect…but you should know by now that I can’t be content with leaving it at that.

What’s interesting, I think, is the meeting of two major characteristics in Elsee. For one, she’s downright moetacular; if KNzSS’s first chapter glosses over Elsee’s enticing hopelessness, the second makes it all-too-clear. She can’t even cook or clean properly, and she’s a centuries-old maid. Note that hopeless here doesn’t equal helpless. Elsee has plenty of tangible impact on the world without the aid of the leading male, which brings me to my next point: she’s a physical manifestation of consequence. Her very presence in the manga is predicated upon Keima’s being a devout otaku; through his gamer reputation, he brings Elsee upon himself, and negative consequences follow in her wake.

It follows that Elsee can be seen as a harbinger of the results of destructive fandom. She’s moe, sure, but it doesn’t do Keima any good — another example of Keima’s ideals manifesting in the real world and proving to be less desirable than they’re made out to be in fiction. In her guise as Keima’s sister, she prompts Keima’s mother to divorce his father, and while I don’t know of a case in which a young ren-ai fan literally ruined his parents’ marriage, we can take this as a more general representation of family schism, something certainly possible in the case of an overzealous fan. And let’s not forget that Elsee is Keima’s tangible link to the manga’s central plot problem, the exorcist role into which Keima finds himself thrust.

The result of all this is a story that portrays a certain kind of fan — some of whom are no doubt included in the manga’s readership — in an almost cautionary light. On the one hand, the situational comedy is stronger for Keima’s failings; on the other, KNzSS isn’t the first example of otaku art to bemoan the lifestyle of part of its audience. I don’t think anyone can say that Welcome to the NHK’s Satou is doing himself any favors in the way he chooses to live, for example. I can’t help wondering what these intertextual thematics imply; are we heading toward a schism — no, more schisms — within the fandom, which will result in a more well-defined social hierarchy than we have already? Must we all learn, in Japanophilia as in society proper, who to look down upon and who to revere? In the present hierarchy, we anime and manga fans are largely concentrated near the top, but who’s to say there won’t eventually be enough factionalism among us to necessitate a chart of our own?

Oh, wait.

I suppose the presence of implied preferences for certain kinds of fans over others in anime and manga makes sense, assuming that most of those responsible for anime and manga are fans of same, and themselves have the relevant social concerns (or that the relevant social forces act upon them). What amuses me about the afore-linked “Japan Heirarchy” is that anime bloggers — much less anime bloggers with an academic approach, fringe members of a fringe blogosphere — haven’t earned a place on the chart, at least in the eyes of its author. Hell, we bloggers are probably diverse enough at this point to warrant the composition of another chart (if someone’s done that already, I’d love to see the result). And I remember thinking as a teenager that I could turn to fandom as an escape from the pointless social politics of high school. Ha!

I may have followed the umbilical cord right out of my train of thought, but I think I’ve retained a few scrapings of relevance in doing so. Taking one step beyond the critique of an artistic tradition, KNzSS comments on the fans of said tradition; taking a step beyond that, it comments on social concerns that, while not unique to the subculture, may affect its members. The matter of divorce, for example, is handled by KNzSS so quickly and in such an offhand manner that one can’t help but wonder about marital trends in Japan and elsewhere, and the applicability thereof to the lives of young otaku. Keima’s tsundere target happens to be a victim of unstable free market economics, and we all know what that’s like right about now — we, the fans of highly commercialized art. Perhaps I’m mistaking art’s necessary reflection of life as art’s interpretable commentary thereupon, but I’m not sure there’s much of a difference between the two until the social climate that produced a work of art is no longer the social climate it’s being applied to.

Again, it’s possible that Kami Nomi zo Shiru Sekai’s elements simply serve the needs of comedy — and, personally, I think it’s pretty funny. But if sufficient conditions exist to render the manga a kind of master allegory, I’m not one to miss the opportunity to run with it.

Tags: kami nomi zo shiru sekai

Thus spake Pontifus on Wednesday, 15 October 2008 at 4:46 am, and Manga expanded tenfold. Become privy to further discussion on the matter via RSS 2.0. You might grace us with a brilliant comment, or trackback from a distant podium.