天下制覇

Penis metaphors shouldn’t talk this much.

Impressions:

I don’t even know why the first half of this episode existed. For starters, it began with Issei talking to his inner dragon. Even given the show’s usual content, I could tell it wasn’t a sexual metaphor because it wasn’t made out of CG. Or actually, given that it’s Issei who wouldn’t know what to do with his wang if given a roadmap and neon sign, perhas it was. If you just cut out the last four minutes or so of last week and the fist 10 minutes of this episode, you could paste the two parts together with no loss of anything. Issei barges into the party, and everybody just goes "ha ha, we were waiting for this, time to fight" vomits up some stills before Rias’s brother shows up to reveal that Ha Ha! It’s time for an extra round of combat. But super mega serious this time. Also he needs to explain the rules. Of "hit the other guy until he stops moving."

And then Issei gives a speech about how he doesn’t have anybody else’s super awesome specialties before he transforms into his Sacred Gear Sacred Seven form. …Except that before he does anything, he has to have a flashback about him standing alone in his room having a telepathic conversation with his dragon parts. Sigh. Matters aren’t helped by continuing to have flashbacks, telepathic chats, and cutaways to Asia during the ‘fight.’ Said fight was also back to the usual awful levels after two weeks of nearly passable ones. Way to let the side down on the closest thing you had to climax.

He doesn’t even win in a good way. He cheapshots Phoeny with holy water in the eye after his inner penis dragon takes back his Sacred Seven suit and then punches him with the cross after talking his ear off. I am not kidding here. The final super awesome attack with OP playing as insert was two men shouting at each other for almost two minutes straight about the attack one of them was going to use. And the attack was a punch to the gut. At least in Index, it’s to the jaw. And I will never stop marveling at Japan’s ability to stretch "I’m about to hit you!" to fill time.

And then Issei and Rias board Griffin Air and fly off into the night. The end. Again, sigh.

Final Thoughts:

It’s kind of a shame the show’s ending now because it really did only (mostly) get better as it went. Issei’s monologuing lessened, the annoying friends who completely dominating the first episode all but disappeared, and while the action still struggled to make it to a passable level it at least bothered to show up. Regardless, it took a long time to get to that point and it didn’t really do much to distinguish itself from the numerous other shows of its ilk. The plot moved too slowly to overlook the weak characters, who weren’t made any stronger by them having to parrot every other thing said to them. None of them even threatened to break out of the archetypes set for them within the first 30 seconds of showing up on screen anyway. The lack of a decent antagonist for a good 10 of 12 episodes here didn’t help matters at all either. No, saying that someone is totally evil and needs to be defeated for their evil evilness doesn’t count as an antagonist.

So bleh. It was certainly improving in the later going as events finally started actually happening and characters shut up for a few seconds, but it was still too little, too late. It unfortunately stuck to the middle of the road where it’s going to be utterly forgettable by having only maybe three or four even notable episodes. I can still think back on the horrible but notable things that shows like Maken-ki and Demon King did while here, episodes 2 through 10 are just a blur. The main thing that I think this will be remembered for is that it was on AT-X, so it got to show nipples on the primary broadcast. Huzzah.