“Goodbye Selfishness, Hello Purity!” is a real good example of a
show that is a good deal less then the sum of its parts. There are several comic moments
and a couple of genuinely hilarious plot turns, but in the end it feels less than coherent
and leaves little impact. The episode starts with Haruto creating a new motto for the Holy
Student Council: “We shall do things for ourselves, by ourselves.” Why? Well,
apparently to give him a good reason not to summon Nino and Hanako when Asashina and
Kazumi ask him to. Nino then turns out to be missing, which is of great concern…to
Kazumi! He gets possessed by a dog, they reach a shinto shrine, and they fight paper demons.
And so on and so on…
The villain of the piece is an ex-classmate of the chairman’s who never passed his
entrance exams. He resented being called an idiot and refuses to go to the next world
until he gets really smart, so he’s kidnapped all the Santoroku statues (of which Nino
is one) to drain all their intelligence and use it for himself. Uh huh.
That’s the problem with this episode. There’s a ton of things going on, and none of it
feels particularly motivated. Why is this ex-student of Saito High really so obsessed
with passing those exams? This episode’s left brain doesn’t know what its right is doing.
The humor is spot-on, but the plot is senseless.
Asashina is particularly odd in this episode, being senselessly cruel (much like she was
in “Love to the Point of Possession”) and, frankly, just annoying. Haruto is
almost a total non-entity in this episode, and the new Student Council motto has no
real payoff.
I’m not rating it lower then a B- for one thing: Nino’s porn book. This is the
one gag that is really set up properly in the beginning of the show, with Kazumi’s
unmotivated concern for Nino being terrifically paid off at the end when the book is
thrown to the ex-student. Even here, the timing isn’t perfect (there’s no real tension in
the scene where Nino’s brain is being sucked dry), but both the reactions of the ex-student
(who looks a lot like M. Bison, weirdly enough) and of poor Kazumi are priceless. I also
love the big USA title on the cover of the porn book. I’m glad we have such fine things to
export.
Rating :B-
