天下制覇

Super Ultra Final Forms for everybody!

Impressions:

At least as far as the production goes, Sunrise did extremely well here for the most part. Yeah, things slipped quite a bit when Kenmi went down and the last boss became a giant floating rock that needed to be beaten with the power of flashbacks and hugs, but it managed at least about ten minutes of more or less straight action. That’s at least eleven more minutes of action than I expect from T&B’s finale, maybe more. It didn’t get much else right though, but at least like last week, enough of it was terrible enough to still be amusing. And don’t get me wrong, production is the single thing that most action shows are completely unable to get right. It’s just a pity it’s wasted on all the rest.

I don’t even need to add any commentary to make this sound ridiculous. I can just list things that happened. Ruri told Arma "The power was inside you all along" which let him transform into his super ultra red form. Kenmi turned into some kind of vampire-fish. Fei turned into a squat little mecha-mouse. Arma has the awesome plan to… run really fast in a circle around Kenmi for about a minute straight to build up the speed to punch him with a drill… which turned him to stone. Kenmi’s desperation plan as dying was to stick the magic rock into Fei, which turned her into the surprise guilt-stricken genocidal Omega Rock last boss needing Night’s super ultra final white transformation via Aoi to take down. And then a three minute montage of everybody going along their daily lives to end the show. Well, at least Lazy Girl survived, even if I think that she just kind of wandered off at the end of the battle.

Just FYI, it also ended with a weird announcement of some kind of Night-based special, assumably going to be released with the DVDs or something, but… whatever, yo.

Final thoughts, such as they are, at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

Aaah, Sacred Seven. It’s been a ride. There’s never been a lack of something to say about you, although aside from the production itself, very little of it was ever positive. It really is a shame too, because actual action is where many ostensibly action shows seem to suffer the most. Animation was excellent throughout though and the music wasn’t far behind. The show does deserve some credit for maintaining a fairly tight focus on its central cast too despite having tons of characters. Yes, I wish there was more time spent on Lazy Girl… or even at least just give her a name, but the show rarely went shooting off into areas with no real relation to the central plot and main characters. You cannot imagine how many shows I wish I could say that about.

Most of the rest just varies along a range of bad, to ridiculously bad. It’s a pity that said plot and characters it managed to keep a tight focus on weren’t actually… you know… good. I welcome the lack of episodes/arcs that transparently try to character traits through sudden machinated melodrama, but I think the sum and total of all character development across every single member of the cast is that Arma lost his angst and became totally personality-less. Kenmi in particular needed to be far better set up as an antagonist and not suddenly go from scientist to crazy Aztec worshipper with a giant horn in his chest across about a 15 second span if he wanted to be taken seriously too. I did prefer the ridiculously bad though. That’s far more fun. It only really reached into that area with any consistency towards the end… aaaand that’s really not something you ever want to call a positive.

If all you’re looking for is something with some flashy action, you can do far worse. That’s about all this really has going for it in the end. Great action, but with flat characters that it is extremely hard to form any kind of connection to, topped with the occasional bit that makes you question how any of these writers have a job. But hey, at least it’ll generate a giant line of toys, and isn’t that what’s most important in the end?