Gorilla God's Go-To Girl

Episode 10

Here's how you can tell the difference between a good guy and a bad guy in The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl: a good guy might not ask before he kisses you, but he apologizes afterwards for it and affirms that he wants you to be comfortable with the pace of your relationship. A bad guy ignores consent and forces a sedative down your throat with his tongue, and then kidnaps you. Easy, right?

I believe this episode aimed to show the juxtaposition between Louis and Sophia's blissful happiness as they forge ahead in their romantic relationship and the war they're going to have to worry about as junior knights. The title implies that as well, using the contrast between light and darkness (although “labyrinth” feels a bit of an overstatement), and as a storytelling device, that's on the nose but still pretty good. There are two stories going on here, and there always have been; there's a reason why the knights all desperately want the Gorilla God's blessing on their team. Something is brewing in the background and probably has been for quite some time, possibly why the Gorilla God blessed someone in the first place: he knew they'd need his help.

Blessings take an interesting role this week as we get to hear about some of the purportedly lesser ones. Up to this point, we've seen a variety of blessings of differing degrees of usefulness – Sophia's is impressive, Isaac's and Eddy's are useful, Araignée's is interesting and has many potential applications – but what about those deemed as “bad?” When Sophia and Louis overhear two women in town lamenting the way they're made to work at the hands of the nobles, they specifically say that they have no choice because they're blessed by the earthworm or the stinkbug. These are interesting choices, because while earthworms have a generally good effect on soil and farming (as I understand it; correct me if I'm wrong), stinkbugs are a pest that feeds on crops. I'd think earthworm blessings would be useful and possibly desirable in agricultural areas, so I'm forced to conclude that these are less desirable blessings because they're “gross.” Given that Sophia was worried about being outed as a gorilla because (among other reasons) it was seen as a masculine blessing, that would make at least some sense. But what's more important about this overheard conversation is that it confirms that there's a hierarchy of blessings that's possibly based at least a little bit on attractiveness. Are nobles then families with a tradition of “good” blessings? Or are blessings just used to keep the common man down to stabilize a caste system?

Maybe I'm overthinking the entire thing, but it's certainly an interesting possibility. The timing of the conversation also raises the possibility that this is something the terrorist group is fighting against, although it looks an awful lot like they're led by someone blessed by the Lion God. That could just be to throw us off, though, or he could be the rare noble in the group, which, given that they shot a duke in the head and tried to blow up an upper-class school, really does seem to have something against the upper echelons. With only two episodes left, I'm not sure we'll get to the bottom of it, but hey, at least we got to see Sophia and Louis being adorable this week. I feel that makes up for a lot.

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The Gorilla God's Go-To Girl is currently streaming on Crunchyroll on Sundays.