The Gorilla God’s Go-To Girl has a great premise, but it’s wasted on the wrong genre.
I did it again.
Just like my mistake with Gushing Over Magical Girls, I skimmed a series summary without actually looking further into the series before watching it.
Thankfully this time I wasn’t slapped in the face with underage lesbian BDSM. Instead, I was only slapped in the face with a good premise being wasted on a rom com for girls.
Ever since cancelling my Crunchyroll subscription after they DCMA’d us over a link to Nyaa Torrents, I’ve had to resort to other methods when it comes to finding new anime to watch. By “new methods”, I mean seeing what’s being uploaded to Nyaa and downloading it if it sounds interesting. That’s how I came across The Gorilla God’s Go-To Girl.
The title alone grabbed my attention, and the summary seemed awesome enough:
In a world where individuals receive blessings from various animal gods at the age of sixteen, Sophia Riller, a timid count’s daughter, unexpectedly receives the blessing of the “Gorilla God”—said to be the strongest in combat. Though she longs for a peaceful school life, her rare and powerful ability attracts the attention of the Royal Knights, who scout her as an apprentice knight. Despite her efforts to hide her overwhelming strength, she can’t help but stand out. Meanwhile, the promising young knights around her watch over her with kindness.
Going by this, I was expecting a series with a lot of action and combat, not a romantic comedy made for tweens.
The general concept of The Gorilla God’s Go-To Girl is great. At 16, people receive a blessing from an animal god that gives them powers related to that animal. For example, one guy has the blessing of the eagle god, so he has sharp long distance vision, can fly, and can stop Patrick Mahomes from winning the Super Bowl three times in a row. Another guy has the blessing of the orca god, making him a strong swimmer. Sophia, the MC, receives the blessing of the gorilla god, granting her the strength and agility associated with gorillas. Because of her rare blessing, the Royal Knights scoop her up into their ranks, with her abilities easily putting her at the top of her class.
A series where people receive animal-based powers at random has so much potential for story-telling, character development, and world-building. There’s so many different animals out there that you could create endless unique characters with unconventional abilities. This is illustrated fairly well in My Hero Academia. In a universe where everyone has superpowers, not all of those powers are going to be glamorous. The spinoff series, Vigilantes, highlights this better than the main series. When you have an almost bottomless well of abilities to draw from, it’s easy to come up with great stories and clever characters who use their seemingly trivial abilities in impactful ways.
The Gorilla God’s Go-To Girl could have went this route and built a strong world of powerful characters creatively using their animal powers to thwart villains doing the same. I’m not saying they needed to become a copy of My Hero Academia or something, but there’s definitely so much more that could have been done with the concept.
Instead, the series is a rom com, focusing mostly on romantic tension between Sophia and another knight, Louis. Oh, and several of the other male knights also have crushes on Sophia. In a way, the series is kind of like a reverse-harem, with guys spending most of the series simping for Sophia like she’s the only female in their universe (she’s not).
The characters themselves aren’t even bad. They all had at least some semblance of personality buried under the awkward crush bullshit, and I didn’t find myself actively disliking anyone. I’d actually like to know more about Louis, whose animal blessing allows him to turn into a squirrel (being able to actually turn into an animal isn’t common in this universe). At first glance, turning into a squirrel seems like a useless power, but in reality it’s actually pretty beneficial. Aside from having heightened senses and agility, his ability allows him to sneak around and remain inconspicuous. Who’s going to suspect that a squirrel is up to something? Unless Louis is trying to spy on the Iranians, transforming into a squirrel is a huge advantage for gathering intel.
This is the kind of stuff that The Gorilla God’s Go-To Girl should have focused on, not Louis revealing to Sophia that he’s never had a girlfriend, despite the fact that the show goes out of its way to portray him as highly desired by virtually every girl at the school. In a series about people being granted superpowers from animal gods, this is quite possibly the most unrealistic part of the entire show. The girls are tripping over themselves for Louis, and even go so far as to bully Sophia when they see Louis spending time with her. Even if Louis isn’t a poon hound (and considering that he’s an 18 year old guy I find it absurd that he isn’t), there’s no way that not a single one of them wouldn’t have gotten with Louis at some point.
There’s a good story that’s clawing and scratching at the bag trying to get out, and the evidence is in the last three episodes. In episodes 10-12, the series finally decides to stop being a rom com and focus on a tangible and semi-interesting plot. The show finally starts touching on the disparity and inequity between the classes of people in the world, with the people who received relatively useless blessings from things like the worm or the stinkbug being relegated to living in slums and toiling away for the nobles. We’re introduced to Leohart (Leonhart?), a member of the lower class that got taken in by a wealthy duke, who was only using him to get a good blessing so his family would be in good standing with the royals. Leohart receives the blessing of the leopard, which is just as rare as Sophia’s gorilla blessing. After Leohart finds out he was lied to and that his adoptive duke father went and had his old slums destroyed and his friend killed, he decides that the class system needs to be overthrown and starts an anti-monarchy terrorist group. Where was this nine episodes ago? I had to slog my way through 10 episodes of cutesy wootsy crap with titles like “The Gorilla Signs of Affection That I Always Dreamed Of” and “The Sofa and Romance’s Gorilla Love Song” to get to an actual interesting story? Too little too late, dude.
Judging it as a romantic comedy, this series is pretty generic. It’s your basic fare of “Will they/won’t they?”, awkward physical contact, and PG sexual tension. If it weren’t for the animal blessings this show wouldn’t have even warranted an opinion from me. I’ll concede, as far as anime goes rom coms aren’t my thing (the closest thing to an anime rom com I’ve watched is Is This A Zombie?), and I’m using American media as my judging metric on this one. But unless I’m really missing something here, there’s nothing special about the romantic comedy aspect of this series.
All in all, The Gorilla God’s Go-To Girl isn’t really good or bad. There’s a good idea hidden underneath the generic rom com garbage, but as it stands this series isn’t really worth your time. Its target demographic of tween girls might kind of enjoy it though, so I’ll be fair and give it a 5/10.
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