天下制覇

  

This isn’t going to win any afterschool awards.

I’m a little slow today. Technical difficulties.

Impressions:

I’m not sure this show could be any further up its own ass. Teenagers pontificating completely straightfaced about smiles as bright as the sun, eyes like ice, philosophizing about the nature of strength, referring to each other by number, and speaking in dark half-whispers about the look in the eyes when reliving that day at the academy while having flashbacks of burning to death. I also have no idea what they think they’re doing with the girl at all. She’s introduced as Generic Bullying Victim and the end of the episode has them saving her (from themselves) and overcoming… whatever the hell it was she overcame from her bullying before by jumping (there was a flashback, so I just assume) only to quintuple down on the bullying and tell her she’s a terrorist now too because she didn’t want to die. Again, because of them. After a number of shots of people streaming out to safety before they set off all their bombs. But it’s okay because they have magical smiles and eyes, and isn’t that what really matters?

To its credit, it does go at its colon spelunking with gusto and an armful of pickaxes, although this metaphor is getting away from me. It certainly wasn’t a boring or uneventful episode, and the production’s definitely solid. There were a few moments that didn’t fit very well, especially the flashback when the music was blaring, but it started off with an actual hook and most of the dialogue was natural instead of expository. There was one hilarious moment with the random news guys where someone offscreen basically went “Hey, remember how you’re a retired cop?” and that was it. 

I’ll probably give it another episode or two at least, mostly on the strength of the production and direction, but certainly not the writing. All three of the main characters are ridiculously bad cliches with a layer of extra wangyness on top. Itmakes me think of a 14 year old girl’s fanfiction, only with terrorists instead of vampires or werewolves or wizards or whatever mopey teenagers are mooning over these days.