天下制覇

Do they have chimps on the staff here?

You know… taking a break from final papers and studying for my finals to watch 11eyes of all things just seems wrong.

Impressions:

This episode featured some of the worst pacing and direction that I have ever seen in my life. They truly managed to take what should have been a rather average episode, thanks to godawful blatant animation reuse and a whole bunch of random exposition jammed in various places, and reduce it to a shambling mess. I swear, we must have seen that same shot of Misuzu and Misao at least four times in the second half of the episode. Misao would have also been a lot more threatening if she actually attacked instead of just posed. "Look at me, I can block everything, and break your swords. And make a little whirlwind" And that’s it. Party tricks. She made a single attack, which was blocked by Kakeru, and then ran off.

The direction was where this episode fell to absolute pieces though. Every time something interesting starts happening, the focus leaps from it to something else entirely unrelated. Saiko’s dead? Nobody wants to see what’s up there. Let’s cut to Kakeru dodge a single attack from Shiori then sit through some exposition. Okay, back to Takehisa going berserk… no, on second thought, let’s see what MIsuzu has to think about last week’s episode, complete with flashback. Wait, Superbia’s attacking Kakeru too? Nah, not worth our time, back to Misuzu getting told what happened earlier in the episode. FOCUS HERE, DAMN IT. Takehisa’s final berserk martyrdom and teatime with crazy Yuka were particularly godawful. I seriously cannot believe that they killed a main character after the ED and off screen. If this were a Sunrise series, he’d be back next week in a mask with an anagram of his name. At least he took out a ton of innocent people with him before he had to be put down. Way to go, hero of justice.

I suppose there were various reveals this week. Superbia is indeed Misao. The Black Knights are Allies of Justice (thanks, Kakeru). Misuzu is a weakling compared to Misao.Yuka’s a lunatic, etc. All of these have been pretty obvious for awhile now, so I find it hard to care. Yuka’s clearly gone over the deep end at this point. She didn’t even notice the red world, and was just going to sit in that room until hell froze over because Kakeru told her to, and then when Shiori said Kakeru was okay, she immediately hopped back to cheerful I’m-going-to-stir-this-tea-endlessly mode. Amazingly, at this point, I think that may make her the most interesting character. Or at least, the most likely to slip a knife into Kakeru’s ribs and end thus appropriately.

Preview:

Nice bra.