天下制覇

Wasn’t expecting a Jojo’s Bizarre Adventure joke in this show.

Don’t ask me why the last show that aired today was the first to appear in internet-land. I try not to wonder too hard.

Impressions:

For the most part, this was a fairly enjoyable episode, although it does have more than its fair share of rough patches. First and foremost, the art is fairly… janky… It’s pretty similar to Seizon in that way. Very well animated and very visually energetic, but at a very pronounced cost to its overall art quality. Don’t get me wrong, I vastly prefer this to a bunch of well-drawn stills, but I also can’t really say that deformed shots and things like this are pleasant either. The direction also needs to be reeled back just a touch. There are lots of very bizarre zoom-ins and outs, fish-eye camera lens, and other weird things that really served no purpose except to be irritating.

However, as far as its characters and comedic aspects went, it did quite well and was fairly amusing from start to finish without relying on having Akari narrate every single detail of her longtime friends. After all the clumsy exposition so far this season, a show that lets the characters organically be introduced is a breath of fresh air. Kyouko was easily the strongest performer of the cast with her obsession to molest and/or dress other characters up as magical girls and otherwise explore the tawdry undersides of their lives. Akari wasn’t too bad either. The rest… eh, they could use some work, but Akari and Kyouko carried the episode for the most part.

So all in all, this was quite entertaining. The art could definitely stand to be strengthened and the direction should probably lay off the sugar before coming to work, but otherwise, a highly energetic comedy with at least two decent characters heading the way. Of course, this is Mitsudomoe’s staff, who started both seasons of that with exceptional first episodes (admittedly each much better than this one) that quickly tailed off, so I wouldn’t get my hopes up that far, but between this and maybe Twin Angels on Monday, it’s looking like a good day for nonsense comedies.

Preview:

Blobs, breasts, and the rest of the cast.