天下制覇

Raven? When’d you start hanging out with only dudes?

Impressions:

This could’ve cool if the animation was a whole lot better… or Isanami wasn’t so irritating. Not to mention the least subtly named character since Amnesio McActuallyTheEvilOverlord. We got her whining, being clueless, pouting, crying in despair, unleashing her secret powers of destruction, and begging for breakfast all in a twenty minute span. Moving quickly is one thing. Being unable to sustain a consistent character for more than two minutes at a time is something else entirely. Pacing in general was kind of a problem, but I think the bigger one was just relatively poor direction and a failure to do a decent job highlighting what was supposed to be important. Isanami was undoubtedly the center of the episode, but she’s just the generic damsel in distress/host for goddess of death.

Everyone else was just sort of RPG protagonist material. There, fighting, being just slightly more competent than the random encounter, but with no actual presence otherwise besides either listening to some dull exposition or giving it. Even ol’ whose-her-face in Symphogear that didn’t even make it to the ten minute mark had more personality than Sanzou, Sasuke, and Raven Yukimura combined. I guess it’s better than having a horrible personality like Shuu, but then again, Sanzou threw a temper tantrum when he woke up in the morning to find Isanami’s breasts near him. Characters without any personality make the story really hard to care about. P4’s Yuu might not have one, but at least his party does. This episode just has a bunch of emotionless guys chatting between Isanami’s violent mood swings and a few poor to mediocre fights. Without particularly interesting action or characters, there’s not a whole ton in here. It looks like next episode introduces another half dozen new characters too, so I’m not really too hopeful that anybody’s going to manage to find a personality. Maybe one of the new characters will have one.

Preview:

No, Isanami. No.