“Kamisama Dolls” can’t seem to decide on what it wants to be. Is it a thriller or a wacky comedy? Is it drama or smut? Every second of this anime, we are simultaneously centimeters away from a gruesome death or a nipple slip.

Dolls in a dollhouse
It struck me as Aki and Koushiro were fighting each other that the entire world around them is empty. Sure, their battlefield might resemble a city, one with densely packed buildings and cars, but there didn’t appear to be a single human soul within striking distance of the two men. Many anime would at least try to fool the audience, dragging combatants out to the middle of nowhere before a fight would commence. Sometimes, anime characters would even warp themselves to an alternate dimension to do battle. Not “Kamisama Dolls,” however.

At one point, Koushiro’s doll materialized out of nowhere and barely missed Aki. The attack sent a plume of dust into the air, but like a fallen tree in an empty forest, did anyone notice? Later in the same scene, Aki fell onto a car and heavily dented it. Oddly enough, the car barely made a sound. There was no one around to watch their struggles. There was no one around to watch the two men fight.

Later in the anime, Utao attempted to jaywalk across a street and a truck nearly ran her over. You didn’t get to see the driver, however. Utao started to apologize profusely, but to who? To what? When an Utao lookalike (yet seemingly male) appeared, the two children also began to fight. In the boy’s own words, “You want to fight, in the middle of a city?” Well, sure. Why not? It wasn’t as if anyone would notice the two.

What is quite apparent is that our characters may have left the village, but they haven’t escaped the forest. The trees have only been replaced by a facsimile of Tokyo’s landscape. Maybe the cars are the forest animals then. Whatever’s the case, it’s like we’re watching children play with dolls in a dollhouse.

Oh so close
Kuga almost made it — he almost avoided an anime cliché. Seconds away from ascending the stairs, Utao had to magically slip in the bathtub. Naturally, a “concerned” brother quickly dashed into the bathroom at the sound of his sister’s yelp. I guess every single episode will have to feature some embarrassing comedy hijinx between Kuga and Hibino. To top it off, the anime even had to pander by making Utao all mad when her brother didn’t care whether or not he had seen his own sister in the nude.

Like Haruhi without any filters
Kuuko is a bitch. An annoying, loudmouth bitch. After kidnapping an unconscious Aki and stripping him for some odd reason (even if his clothes were smelly, wouldn’t his body be smelly too?), Kuuko ranted about her boring world to her captive. She went on and on about the disappointing paranormals and how those people were all imposters. Now that she can confirm the existence of the strange dolls, however, she wants in.

As I listened to Kuuko’s rambling, and watched her assault Aki with an airsoft(?) gun and taser, I said to myself, “This is what Haruhi would be outside of her protective bubble: a fucking bitch.”

A bad guy who gets his ass kicked
Yes, Aki is a bad guy; he’s a cold-blooded murderer. In a slight twist, however, Aki was also the underdog in this episode. First, Koushiro had our villain on the ropes. Then Aki got himself tied up and abused by Kuuko (although it’s clear he could have escaped whenever he wanted to… so is he a masochist?).

Finally, Aki taunted Kuga only to get his face beaten in. I wonder, then, if his character will somehow be redeemed by the end of the series. Rarely does a bad guy become the underdog and not come out a little cleaner and softer at the end.