天下制覇

Ooooooooooooooooooooooooo.

Impressions:

Hmm. This will be interesting to talk about. One of those rare times where I feel like I actually have to discuss the plot. I see the parallels to Ga-Rei Zero now that people who watched the early pre-airing were talking about. It begins with a flashforward to one character at another’s grave. By the end of the episode, said dead character has sung the song of Gungnir, had a beam shoot evil ivy into her veins, and transformed into some manner of berserk half-mech. In the interim, she was too weak and clueless to realize to run away when monsters were attacking and got one of her idols killed, which taught her to… not be so clueless. Sort of. It didn’t look like they were going to win that fight anyway. I appreciated how the monsters stopped attacking so she could throw her weapon aside and run to the side of some random girl in the crowd who got winged by shrapnel though. What polite monsters. Also amusing how her partner just stood there yelling. What a jerk.

So in short, the episode focuses on three characters, one of which dies, and the other you’re told is going to die in the opening seconds of the show. It’s certainly a hook, I’ll give them that, and never let it be said that I’m not a fan of wanton bloodshed. The rest was pretty well-done too, but there were certainly a number of hiccups here and there. The jarring shift from ol’ Gungnir-girl watching her hero die to suddenly having wacky fun at school was probably the worst of them, but the CG and general cheapness during the concert made me cringe a little. The scar in the shape of a forte symbol also made me roll my eyes hard enough to see the aneurysm building in my brain. Production was quite good otherwise though, barring the random splash images naming attacks. No, that’s not supposed to read "Lastoometeor." They handled the music quite well too, which is a blessing given that apparently bullets lack the power of vibrato.

So far though, definitely one of the solidest episodes of the new season thus far. There’s still a lot about the characters and world in general that needs to be fleshed out a bit more, but that comes with time… or with a giant expositional dump at some point. Hopefully the former. I certainly enjoyed this first episode enough to give the next few a chance.