天下制覇

The most deadly of enemies.

Impressions:

Maybe it was or maybe it wasn’t appropriate for me to groan when one of the first shots of the show was from the floor just to get a clear view or Ao’s panties. Groan painfully I did regardless. You’d also think that as a reboot and the descendant of an OVA series, they could forego some of the setup, or at least not just infodump it out, but there’s a little blonde girl who needs things explaaaaained to her! At least she was secretly an antagonist because lord knows I’m tired of Enjin. Still doesn’t change that the monster of this week were big goldfish. Not like, mystical goldfish that cause earthquakes or anything. Just large goldfish. The boss goldfish was just like the others except that it chased shiny lights. There have been more inspired conflicts is I guess what I’m saying. 

Production has taken a pretty big (and expected) step down from the OVAs which share the same production staff. It maintains the same overall style of direction and music especially though, so there’s not a lot to say about that. I still like the expressiveness of it, the more subtle way they handle character relationships and interactions, and the little visual things they do without mass fanfare, such as Ao’s head dumpling thing, but it’s not going to win any awards for frame to frame prettiness. The style works best when it’s in motion and this episode didn’t have a whole lot of that.

If you’ve already seen the OVAs or even the first series, than most of this episode is just kind of a waste of time recap of characters and their abilities, often in just straight up exposition. Next episode looks a lot more action packed, so that’s more promising. Hopefully the preview isn’t one big lie. 

Next Episode:

Big balls.