天下制覇

Didn’t see that one coming.

Impressions:

I should probably just retire "this was a strange episode, even for KKN" because every time it tries to add a plot, it gets like this. Last time, it was Kyouka’s crazy neo-demonic past, this time, it was Raichou just testing the family while Gebok turned out not to be a human anymore, but the crazy hat/mask thing that he wears. After flipping over half the city into some kind of crazy technological thingy and turning most of the residents into animal hybrids, he pulled up a giant beam cannon (that only has one leg and yet still managed to walk), and then attached himself to it. Meanwhile, Raichou was just there to see the ‘real power’ of the family. How lame.

Then to beat him, Kyouka and Gekka provided a distraction and Ouka used Kyouka as a screen to put a bullet between Gebok’s eyes from a mile or so out with a pistol. Quite the shot. Then, since he had enough time to gather energy, Hyouka sprouted wings that sprouted legs to make a "Lucifer Cannon" to destroy Gebok once and for all (yeah right). True to her word, Raichou then spread the cure around the city, turning everybody back to normal.

Unfortunately, the animation and direction for this episode was simply terrible. The best animated thing was Hyouka’s ridiculous transformation and even that was marrred by some really awful CG feathers blatently tacked on at the last second. The worst was… well… just about everything else, but if I had to pick one thing, I’d have to say Chika’s stopmotion diiiiiive to catch Momo. That was just embarrassing. They decided to use the KKN ‘dramatic evil’ music for the big "finish off Gebok" plan too, which was just bizarre. They were also really really selling the fanservice early on in this episode with fullbody shots of Chika’s friends lying on the ground, writhing and moaning. You could have mistaken the neckup shots as being from some kind of terrible ninja porn.

You know, come to think of it, I can’t imagine good ninja porn. And speaking of ninjas… a spider ninja named Spider? Come ooooooooonnnnnnnn… Well, maybe it’s written like ‘Cloud’ instead. I’ll still roll my eyes at it.

I didn’t think it was one of the better episodes at any rate. Better production values would have helped a lot, but I’m mostly just really disappointed that after her big introduction at the end of the previous episode, Raichou didn’t really do a damned thing. I have hopes for her though. She’s got some crazy eyes and between her really cutesy speech patterns (reminds me of a cloying idol) and the fact that she uses a somewhat antiquated mode of speaking probably means that she’s at least a little more of a nutcase than she let on this episode.

Preview:

Kyouka finds wand. Becomes magical girl. Universe ends.