天下制覇

…What’s with all the rabbit shows this season anyway?

In case you were curious, Dantalian aired a special this week where they rounded up a bunch of old people, put them in a poorly lit room, and had them shake books. It did have the show’s ED and a next episode preview for episode 1 if you’re interested in such things, although they’re rather underwhelming. And in unrelated news, check out this awesome show Crunchyroll picked up. (Screenshot for posterity). I’m looking forward to it already.

Impressions:

Ugh. Pacing. The show could have… and probably should have… skipped the entire tedious first 12 minutes. Most of the second 12 minutes too for that matter. So much of this episode was spent watching Himea float against the trippy background that I wouldn’t be surprised if Zexcs’s staff was simply high while making this. After the first 2-3 minutes of "Taito, I love you, I want to see you," I got the message. I didn’t need another 5-6 minutes of it. Character development has to come first. Then maybe I can start caring about why they’re stuck inside CG bricks.

Production was middling, about what you’d expect from Zexcs. Lots of abuse of the blur transition and some awful looking sped up animation in places. Taito and Himea really don’t differentiate themselves from the magical girlfriend plus useless sidekick protagonist pack either. I’m willing to cut him a little slack for the shock of being beheaded, but he’s still lame and annoying. The two side characters that only had about 3 minutes of screen time but managed to stab things, ride demon phalluses, and try to play with severed heads were far more interesting.

So… meh. Generic magical girlfriend action-but-not-really show that didn’t do anything well enough to sell itself on a single front. I’ll give it another looksie or two because Fridays suck, but this episode was about three minutes of actual content stretched out to 24. Skipping the OP and ED only wins you points with me if you actually do something worthwhile with the time. Not fritter it away on bad shots of a character running around.