天下制覇

Don’t worry, Team Academy City, you’ll get the pikachu next time.

Impressions:

Not a horrible episode, but the same things that plagued the rest of this arc plagued this episode in terms of things jumping around and all the action being predicated on the more powerful side acting like complete prats. Everything was really well animated for the first three minutes or so, including Vento’s attacks being changed from slow drifting glowing balls into fast moving black holes kicking up debris, but it doesn’t change the fact that the Accelerator fight made no sense whatsoever. Well… Vento’s either for that matter, although she eventually remembered for a brief moment that her giant war hammer could be used as a war hammer, then completely forgot again and went back to using attacks that made her cough up blood. Apparently the technology used in the creation of war hammers is also too much for her to stand. Accelerator could only lose if he did nothing but try for hand-to-hand striking attacks, so of course, that’s all he did aside from one brief face ripping moment. Apparently losing a cheek isn’t worth mentioning to Kihara though. Like, seriously. Accelerator is holding an entire handful of skin, which is apparently little more than a scratch.

They did have to cram in the random usual stuff, but at least this time it was a little more character focused than world-building expositionally focused aside from Index’s magical healing song. You’d think Kihara would take a moment out from beating up Accelerator to think about the defenseless girl that started glowing and singing three feet away, but no. It only got really funny though when they decided to show him kicking an unmoving Accel for about 10 seconds while Index was chatting on the phone two feet away. Vento also started ranting about how science ruined her/her brother’s life out of nowhere, because all antagonists much have complex backstories, even if they have to spit them out 30 seconds before defeat. Of course, after the first few minutes, every time she attacked, she coughed up blood and dropped her weapon, including just before Touma punched her. I’m really not kidding here. They cut to an over-animated shot of Touma running, she attacks, he cancels it, she coughs up blood and drops her hammer, then after about ten more seconds of slow-mo Touma running, he finally hits her while she’s defenseless and already leaking copious amounts of fluid down her face. All three of the people there are dribbling morons.

And then Accelerator’s angel steroids kick in and he helps Kihara to blast off again. Cut to ED. Couldn’t you think of a way to make that less cheesy looking, JC Staff? Was the shooting star look really the way to go? How about a closeup of him beat up and/or on fire instead? I mean, you just launched him into the stratosphere by his face. I think a death like that deserves something better than a Team Rocket ending.

FYI, GOSICK’s broadcast has been cancelled today in Japan due to acts of God which I’m sure you’re all aware of. Even CrunchyRoll decided to cancel their broadcast of it. At the moment, GOSICK’s first scheduled airing in Japan right now is on Aichi TV on Monday.

Preview:

Some of these images are not like the others.