天下制覇

But… those aren’t lasers at all!

Impressions:

This was definitely one of the best episodes of the show, but as with most of the comedy, I have absolutely no idea if they had any idea what they were doing. That generally means that they don’t, but it still has the fun of watching a pack of drunk puppies try to escape a bumper castle. Unlike Tiger and Bunny, there isn’t a serious bone in this show’s body, so it’s so much easier to take all the awful writing in stride and laugh at it when it’s not trying to make you sympathize with the characters or what’s going on. I particularly enjoyed the random pan over of various school festival things that featured a bunch of students marveling at a small robot that could… wait for it… lift a piece of paper. Let’s not forget that this is a setting where giant robots attack the school seemingly daily which are then fought off by a trio of tiny girls in frills. But here they are gaping at a tiny robot that can pick up a piece of paper… which then goes berserk and starts lifting skirts. Which happens to be Haruka’s weekness this week because her magical girl transformation didn’t include panties for some reason. Your own hubris has damned you.

And that’s without even touching on Misty Elvis or Aoi and Tesla’s jelly-filled chests. I also couldn’t help but laugh at Tesla and Nine being surprised at finding out who those mysterious transforming girls really are. Yeah, I know that the whole magical girl disguise that nobody can recognize is always a terrible cliche, but that doesn’t make the characters gaping and going "I never suspected that the two people who look exactly the same were the same person!" They yell each other’s names in battle. There was seriously an exchange this episode that went something like Aoi: "Haruka!" Tesla: "It’s over, Haruka." Haruka: "How do you know my name!?" And then Haruka figured out who these strange new people were too not because they were dressed slightly different than usual, but because Nine was wearing a band-aid. Faces are hard, but apparently band-aids are easy.

Plus, the Claw had a cameo. Nice to see that it’s getting work in its off-season. Hopefully it’ll show up on Working!!’s early premiere episode on Saturday too.

Preview:

A Misty Knight episode… finally!