天下制覇

  

That damn montage horse, man. That horse.

It’s been 9 months since the second episode, and 12 months plus an entire different series since the first, but hey, I’ll pretend like I remember anything more than it was about those half-vamp/mer girls and had a foxy woman at some point.

Impressions:

It’s probably a good thing too, because I’m giving them the benefit of the doubt with that corny stuff through the first third. Maybe a bunch of that was rehash, but it was nine months ago so who can remember? Not me. This is also how you handle that kind of thing well, by frontloading the motivation so that’s the starting point and ramping the emotional level up from that instead of trying to jam it into the middle or even the bloody end of the fight and dicking up the tone all over the place, Certain Show I Don’t Have to Name. Of course, over the top was the phrase of the day anyway, and when everything’s hitting about the same level of corny, it doesn’t stick out like a sore thumb as it does when you slam on the brakes and try for maudlin melodrama, Certain Show I Don’t Have to Name. What did stick out were the CGI matchbox police cars, especially with the series art style. Ye lords. Those things were… something else. 

The art and animation… are what they are and even though I know people touch themselves to even a fraction of it in Pretty Cure, I’ll never love the jumpy frames or flat, blurred style (although it does work pretty nicely with the more visceral parts like the wolves going at it). The direction, however, was a thing of beauty, particularly the constant actual true back and forth of plans within plans that are revealed organically as the fight went and the constant twists/escalation until it all ended in a decisive fiery eruption are something that for all the actual animation muscle Mappa and UFOTable are throwing around this season, they’ve only come close to matching a couple times. Wit and skill on both sides in ample amount, with even some solid back and forth trash talking, although Lila certainly gets the gold star there.

It was a strong end after the somewhat mediocre first two episodes of this OVA set and a good personal reminder and/or thing for me to point at to go “This is what direction can do for an action scene, you clowns. Stop just throwing animators at it.” The cops and sexy nurses more than picked up the slack for the main cast being off ogling fox women or whatever it was they were doing.