天下制覇

 

Shock!

Impressions:

For some reason, I feel like comparing this episode or a horror movie. Not because it was scary or thrilling or atmospheric, or anything like that. Good god, no. More like the time when a character does something absurdly stupid, like after finding a trail of blood in the abandoned shack, stumbles around aimlessly, and then messily dies. Only instead of a few tense minutes of a cheerleader gasping and panting punctuated by the meaty sound of an icepick through the forehead, it was just naked teenage boys rubbing each other. And then having prophetic dreams about how evil the obviously evil people were and choosing to ignore them. No cheerleaders. No panting. No icepicks in the meat. And ten damned minutes of it. It was probably the squeaky new female that they wouldn’t shut up about how cute she was before falling off the face of the episode. Or maybe the middle aged man creeping into teenage boys’ rooms at night to watch them sleep.

Speaking of which…. And then the exposition began. Storytelling is an art, guys. If you want to pull the twist of “EVERYTHING YOU THOUGHT YOU KNEW WAS WRONG!” then let’s find a way other than a goddamned eight minute lecture. Of course, the first step in that would have probably been setting it up to matter. Who cares if the history you just learned (relatively speaking) is somewhat different? It’s probably a cultural thing coming from the all great and divine Emperor who can do no wrong, while the idea that the ruling class may have done shady things is to the west less of a surprise than an inevitability. No, that role is saved for the Christianity and capitalism avatars in Japanese media, which are inevitably secretly trying to revive devils or become God. Still, at least think of something actually connected to the characters instead of “The history books are wrong! Kill everyone you know! Obey my dog!”

Next Episode:

Stupid people being stupid.