The Spring 2025 Anime Preview Guide
The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl
How would you rate episode 1 of
The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl ?
Community score: 3.9
What is this?
In a world where various animal gods can bless people when they turn 16, Sofia Reeler, an earl's timid daughter, happens to be blessed by the Gorilla God (who is said to be the most powerful god in combat).
The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl is based on the Gorilla no Kami Kara Kago Sareta Reijō wa Ōritsu Kishidan de Kawaigareru manga series by Shirohi. The anime series is streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.
How was the first episode?
Rating:
Anime gorillas and I have a…complicated and traumatic history. Thankfully, unlike that other show, The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl is not a wretched, spiteful, laughter-destroying entropy machine ripped straight out of the bowels of hell. Instead, it's a goofy romantic fantasy where our heroine, Sophia, is puzzled to discover that she has earned the blessing of the gorilla god, from all of the possible animal options. On top of that, she's got to deal with the ins-and-outs of aristocratic academic life (and she doesn't even have an electric guitar to wail on and mend her woes). How is a girl supposed to do that while also learning how to manage her freakish new gorilla-strength?
Also, the new order of knights she's been scouted into is full of hunky boys that all represent the different animal gods, and they'll all undoubtedly fall in love with her. Naturally. So far as the new anime we've covered so far for Preview Guide are concerned, it is The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl that has been the hardest to write about, for some reason. For every other show, my thoughts and opinions have formed fairly quickly and clearly as I've gotten through their premieres, and getting those takes down on to paper has been refreshingly straightforward, this spring. With The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl girl, though, I just don't know what else I can say, other than “It's fine!” That was word that consumed my thoughts through the entire premiere:
“This Sophia girl is a fine protagonist.”
“These are some perfectly fine jokes about freakish gorilla strength.”
“This animation is perfectly fine.”
“The world-building for this fantasy setting is fine enough to move the plot forward.”
“The hunky anime boys surrounding Sophia sure are fine…but, you know, in the sense that they're mediocre, not that they're hot. Wait a minute, why I am clarifying things for my own inner monologue? I obviously would know what I mean when I'm talking to myself! This is starting to get ridicu- oh, look, Sophia met another boy. He's alright, I guess.”
That's…yeah, that's pretty much all I've got! This here is the very definition of an anime that wants to be a middle-of-the-road rom-com that can get you through some thirty-odd minutes of your weekend, and it accomplishes exactly that, and nothing more. Given that the season is so stacked with great romance and great comedy, though, I'd be hard-pressed to recommend The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl as anything other than an emergency understudy to be used as a replacement for if any of the season's better shows get delayed for some reason.
Disclosure: Kadokawa World Entertainment (KWE), a wholly owned subsidiary of Kadokawa Corporation, is the majority owner of Anime News Network, LLC. One or more of the companies mentioned in this article are part of the Kadokawa Group of Companies.
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