天下制覇

Magical pets make everything better.

Impressions:

After five banal minutes, I was ready to call it quits and started flipping through the rest of the episode. I saw guns and explosions and resigned myself to suffering a little bit longer to presumably get to Satelight actually putting some effort in. That was a very poor decision on my part. Apparently they used up the budget last week because the ‘fight’ this week because the idols and the cops was almost more flashback to last week’s thing than current events. Aaaand current events were 95% stills. Aaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaand the big dramatic post-battle scene was instigated by Spunky Spice’s ribbon falling off and she just had to risk life and limb to go back into the combat zone to get it, whereupon a giant chunk of metal crushed Angsty Spice and they had to use the power of their magical jellyfish to lift it off her. Yes, you read that right. They have special Idol Auras that give them super powers. And there are magical space fish.

The first half was an utter snooze fest of character introductions to the most painfully cloying characters imaginable. Here’s Kooky Spice who hides under things and is soooooo totally wacky, and Brainy Spice, who you can tell is the smart one because she has glasses, and Sporty Spice, who has a ponytail. Paint them all blue and this could almost pass for an episode of Space Smurfs, except I’m pretty sure the Smurfs sing more. At any rate, it has not gotten any more watchable. The characters remain moronic tape recorders whose main personality traits are undying adoration of AKB, which they never goddamned shut up about. There’s unsubtle marketing, and then there’s going at it with a comically massive 1,000 ton hammer. It’s almost laughably bad, but between the previous episode and the last, there were nearly twenty straight minutes which can be best summarized by a loop of chipmunk sounds with a subliminal track repeating "BUY AKB CDS" played beneath it.