Surprisingly, it’s not this show.

Implicitly stated at the start of any show, anime or otherwise, is a promise of some sort to the viewers about what they can expect to see accomplished by the show. It might be a spectacular CG explosion, an opening monologue by one of the main characters, or an opening theme song with a montage of the various characters of the show doing a variety of things but, whatever it is, it’s there.  If the viewer is amicable towards this promise then, chances are, the viewer will decide to continue watching the show with this promise morphing into what’s expected of the show.

Savvy creators use the formation of the show’s promise to apply spin to the viewing experience. At times only promising a little is the way to go: it’s not a shallow, failed romantic comedy but merely a well-animated fan service anime or it’s not an anime with a train wreck of a plot, so poorly constructed that a four-year old could do better but merely a fun romp that’s designed to get licensed as a kids show overseas. Other times it’s best to promise too much: that high-concept, big budget anime isn’t a failure even with it’s poor pacing, plot, characters, and characterization because it was ambitious or that anime that promises funny comedy, serious drama, and tasteful fan service isn’t a failure even when it delivers none of that because it’s fun to watch a train wreck.

Of course, promising too little or too much might backfire on the creator. The viewers might decide to move to an anime promising more or the viewers decide watching one series that fails as hard as Fractale did is enough. So, it’s really a two-edged sword for creators and in lesser hands, a recipe for disaster. This season, one anime in particular stuck out as so completely and utterly failing at what it promised to do without providing so much as a decent excuse.

That anime is Kamisama no Memo-chou (God’s Memo Pad).

The biggest, most energetic promise of Kamisama no Memo-chou is it’s an empowering manifesto for NEET’s (people not in Education, Employment, or Training) and their worth in society. It’s mentioned everywhere; it’s even specifically expounded upon by the characters in the anime – Alice repeatedly says that she follows a NEET code and that she’s a NEET detective, for example. So it’s all the more baffling to realize that the creators take great pains to actively work completely contrary to this vocal promise. Take Alice, the genius hikikomori detective, she’s not actually a NEET. She’s a self-employed detective that has an office and accepts paying clients (even the clients that don’t pay in money will render some service to her). She’s not even a hikikomori; it’s more like she’s just lazy and doesn’t like to go outside but even then she still goes outside every other episode or so. (Much more often than the woman who runs the ramen shop appears to.) Then there’s the main character; he’s so generic I can’t remember his name, but, he’s a high school student and works part-time at the ramen shop and is in training to be a yakuza gangster. He’s like an anti-NEET.

This wasn’t a hard promise to keep; look at Scooby-Doo, it fits the bill perfectly for a show about NEET detectives.

The other big promise of Kamisama no Memo-chou is the idea of Alice being a genius detective that uses the latest technology to get the information needed to solve any case from the comfort of her bed. This idea is reinforced by her impressive computer with it’s dozens of monitors but again the creators seem to actively work against this promise  the moment it’s formulated. The final story arc is freshest in my mind so let’s use it. When the time comes for our intrepid detectives to find the hideout of the people behind the drug Angel Fix, what do they do? What does Alice and all her intelligence and supposed computer prowess do? If your answer starts with either Alice doing something with a computer or putting on her thinking cap than you’d be wrong. Apparently, the right answer is you need an assistant willing to take the drug himself and someone to tail him to see where he walks off to.

Asinine. Even if Alice wasn’t supposed to be genius and a computer geek, the creators of Kamisama no Memo-chou are truly and completely dimwitted.

There are so many ways our heroes could have discovered where the hideout is without anyone taking the drug. For instance, if Angel Fix was such an epidemic then there should have been a large amount of people wildly walking towards the drug hideout that there should be multiple ways to track where they go. Check and collate police reports of where they arrest people under the effect of Angel Fix; look for them on security camera footage; trawl Twitter for people who mention people acting funny in public and cross-reference their GPS data; search the backgrounds of pictures uploaded for people under the influence. I’m not even sure that Alice would need a computer A.I. to help; she might just need a moderately clever computer program. Heck, a slightly less high-tech solution would involve implanting a GPS tracker in both drug dealers and monitoring where they go. There was really no legitimate reason for the assistant to take the drug. (Even if they were so hell-bent on having someone take the drug, why not administer it one of the drug dealers they captured?)

Like I said earlier, if Kamisama no Memo-chou had a good excuse like interesting and thrilling mysteries then it would have gone a long way to excusing the complete failure to live up to either of these two major promises; however, the mysteries were barely adequate. I’ll give them a little credit for being better than the mysteries found in Gosick but Sherlock they ain’t. (Check out the new Sherlock series from the BBC to see what good writing makes possible in mysteries set in modern times.)

Kamisama no Memo-chou wasn’t the worse anime of the season but it was worst self-declared failure. If only it would have better met what it promised to be or better tailored what it promised to it’s actual content then it might not have felt like such a colossal waste of time and potential.