天下制覇

  

Different isn’t necessarily better.

Impressions:

I probably wouldn’t have watched this if the other two shows today hadn’t been… what they were, but I think it bears mentioning if nothing else that this episode did a far better job of the first in setting down that it was going to be differentiating itself and not rehashing the same thing as the first season. Of course, the next step beyond that is making your new content something that is actually enjoyable to watch. Now that it’s just going to be skipping over Mystery Hour With The Scooby Doo Gang for dates, comedy, and hijinks, the dates, comedy, and hijinks have to step in and carry their weight.

Short story shorter, they did not. Jokes weren’t often enough nor creative enough. This is ground already well-trodden by the original with these characters doing these things just repackaged somewhat. It was far from the worst comedy outing I’ve seen from this season, probably even one of the better ones, but that’s more of a slight against the other comedies than an endorsement of this one. I only got a chuckle here and there from it, and mostly from Yuu simply being flamboyant or weird in his gigantic collars. If he popped those things, they’d eat his head. One thing that certainly didn’t help was the incredible disappearing budget. Always an issue, but this season seems to be having a particularly horrible problem with it.

They really should just be going full-out comedy or parody here, not apparently trying to stretch out a single social link for an entire season with rather generic “teens hanging out having wacky times” on the side. We’re good on that last part, guys. You can’t swing a dead cat in Japan without hitting at least three people cross dressing as characters from one of those. Do something more original with your stale franchise, or at least more fun. While it’s good that this isn’t just a rehash, nobody thought P4 would be that much better if it only had more beach episodes.

Next Episode:

 

Beach episode.