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What does this episode have against limbs?

Impressions:

Thus begins the second week (at least) where all I remember of the previous is “some guys that aren’t the protagonists had punchies.” Well, I do remember that one of them was secretly not a guy too, which I’m not entirely certain how leads into the crazy guy who’s spent the last 20 minutes (or more?) sulking in a corner to suddenly go on a dragon-hungry craze. So perhaps, I guess, my point is that this episode could’ve been better contextualized. Also, while the budget did see a significant upswing this week, it’s still far from impressive. It probably gets a bye though just from the first two thirds of the episode being more or less non-stop action with only a few eye-rolling moments now and then when he froze time to channel his inner expository monk to… use pretty much the same magic as everyone else, but smaller. Luckily, they explained that it’s super special or it would have just been silly.

Still though, if every episode was like this, I’d have a much warmer feeling all around toward the show. I particularly liked the musical direction during Natsume’s reveal, although the fanservicey visuals were certainly doing their best to undermine that moment. It did need a bit more of a budget and more of a lead-in relating to the characters, especially if they were going to end the whole thing with Spinny-Hair being huffy. Although saying they ended it with that is a bit misleading. That’s just the last time we saw the main characters. It actually ended with about 4 minutes of dour people standing in a line while a cello player abused his moment in the spotlight.

Strongest episode for this show in a very long while regardless, advancing a number of things actually involving the main characters without (yet) going on for ten minutes about each little detail and, while I hesitate to call it an action packed first two thirds, they at least kept the obvious padding to a minimum, something certain other shows with much bigger budgets could stand to learn. And now no doubt back to a few entire episodes of padding.  

Next Episode:

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