天下制覇

*sigh* Poor Ami. She deserves better than these folks.

Impressions:

A decent episode, but easily about half of it was spent on the play/fake wrestling match, which was 100% pure time and space filler serving little to no purpose and not being exceptionally interesting or funny while the other half was mostly just everybody else piling onto Ryuuji for his daddy issues. The art and animation was also getting a little more… ugly around the edges, especially towards the end of the episode. Taiga managing to eat part of her uniform that fell into her crepe was pretty adorable, but otherwise, it was an episode dominated once again by Ryuuji’s proper family values with a healthy chunk of wrasslin on the side. I’m just glad that we only got a very brief look over the clusterboff of maid and cosplay booths at the school instead of the full tour. Man, do I hate all the cliches and tropes that come with school festival episodes.

The big event of the episode was Minori and Ryuuji getting into a screaming argument over Taiga’s father which not even Taiga trying to make them terrorist fist bump could resolve (great mediating skills there), and Ami comforting Ryuuji afterwards. She didn’t try to tease him (seriously at any rate) or try to get under his skin at all, just was pretty much there for him to stop the angsty daddy issues from getting too bad while everybody else was off doing their own thing. Even later, Taiga was chastising him and telling him that he needed to apologize to Minori without even thinking about him. I mean, I’m not entirely on board with his proper family values schtick, but it seems like Ami’s really the only one even trying to get along with him right now.

Preview:

Return of the dragon.