天下制覇

  

And despite the “rush the entire board” move, may take longer than actual blitz chess.

Impressions:

After the bizarre addition of slapstick last week, this continues the trend by again dumping in a whole bucket full of something that would have been singularly out of place in previous episodes; stale visual gags. At least they didn’t dwell on them, but that’s not keeping this show from feeling any less haphazardly put together or dragging. The entire first half could more or less be summed up by “Look! An elf!” But they’re really half-assing any overtures of her being evil too, so where’s the tension even supposed to be?

At least until the halfway point, at which it became the world’s most obviously author dictated game of chess, although calling it chess is probably pushing it. They tried to act like it was regular chess, but not really regular chess, for about three minutes. Then the shouting began and every piece started moving all at once based on the sheer overwhelming charisma and cuteness of the characters, so of course the wunderkinds are unstoppable aside from magical ass-pulling, which they obviously overcome as well, by doing the exact same thing as before, only louder.