天下制覇

Why does everything seem to combine with everything else if you just slap them together?

Impressions:

Not as exciting as the past few episodes, probably because Horizon spent what seemed like forever shooting her cannon, and with a naked Toori posing comically or hugging her as she held the giant thing, it was a little hard to not think terriblly Freudian thoughts about the whole scene, particularly as it just seemed to keep going on and on. All that and that neither of them have really done much this season that would warrant them having the big final moment. Yeah, I know that they’re ostensibly the central characters of the show, but Mary/Tenzou would’ve been a better choice there to show off their Power of Love^tm and whatnot since they’ve had much greater focus during this arc. Instead, they got the very brief and anticlimactic cleanup.

I wouldn’t have minded if they had spent a little more time on the lesbian angels with their combining brooms instead, although I question the positioning of Malga’s head inside Margot’s cleavage as an effective flying position. Maybe it cuts down on overall wind resistance. And feels good, of course. Or maybe a little bit better lead-in/outtro to Mary/Tenzou saving the day with her combining swords. He did lose some points at the very end for cowering under a gigantic fluffy comforter from the terrors of a naked and inviting English woman too. That’s not going to protect your virtue, Tenzou. Just give up and take it like a man.

Final Thoughts:

Strong start, strong end, and far more consistent across the board than the first season. It did have many of the same issues as the first season though. There were a couple total dog episodes, mostly in the posturing/negotions between Musashi and England, the Tenzou/Mary or Nenshin/Shakespeare stuff wasn’t anywhere near as strong as Toori/Horizon from the first season, and all of Juana’s pseudo-arc was just presented in pretty bad dumps which didn’t really have anything to do with… well… anything else going on. It also continued to over-explain things far more than it often needed to. It’s super science/magic suffices.

Regardless of all that though, they did a great overall job with the fights and keeping things moving quite a bit better than last season by spreading out the lame episodes instead of in one slow package in the middle. There were a few fights that I wished they hadn’t cut over and a couple brief ones that I’m not sure why they existed. It was still easily the top action show for the season and for a while in recent memory. If you were a fan of the first season, this comes easily recommended. While the high points probably weren’t quite as high as the first season, they did do a good job of not quite eliminating,but at least smoothing out the worst parts.