天下制覇

This is a becoming a very confusing day very quickly.

Impressions:

Continuing our trend of looking at hooks into opening episodes, this one began with a shut-in using the internet, followed by a dream wherein he screamed "WHAT’S WRONG WITH BEING AN OTAKU!?" At this point, I rolled my eyes and sighed a bit in general resignation. As it turns out, my reaction was a tad premature, as from there, once it finished spazzing out over maids, it was time for some incredibly dry and boring exposition. That’s one way to make me miss being screamed at, I suppose. Bore me to tears for five minutes. The second half pretty much continued in that trend, with the ‘humor’ primarily being such gems of humor like "A HALF ELF!? CUTE!"

To be fair, most of it wasn’t trying to be particularly funny, but that just raises the question of what it was trying to be, which I don’t have an answer for. Touching that he’s completely objectifying her? Heartwarming that being objectified is apparently the highlight of her life? Tourette-ic since he can’t help but scream out his every thought at the top of his lungs no matter the situation? Narcoleptic since it keeps cutting to dream flashbacks from nowhere? That also leads into the most… uh… inappropriate moment of the episode, I guess is the best way to put it? After his second sudden narcoleptic dream, he wakes up with an erection. They even call attention to it. He looks down at a bulge and hurriedly and embarrassingly covers it up. Strangest is that it then just goes away without comment. So… I guess they just wanted to show that he had morning wood? And boner shown, mission goddamned accomplished.

It does have some really strange music at times, so, uh… that’s something. Most of it is just pastoral, sleepy twanging guitars though. Production is otherwise about as middling as it can get. I don’t remember any particularly cheap moments, but there’s little going on in the visual direction to make things interesting in any way either, besides the mystery boners. If it was supposed to be a comedy, it didn’t make me laugh. If it was meant to be more of a heartwarming drama, both of the characters it was focused on are fairly unsympathetic and kind of horrible people. That leaves… uh… I’ll get back to you on that.

Next Episode:

The princess joins the cast.