天下制覇

  

Originality is at an all time premium in Japan these days.

Impressions:

It bears remembering that cliches are cliche for a reason. They’re part of a formula that at least at some point, worked well enough to be popular, which then spawned enough copycats trying to duplicate their success by mimicking it on a completely superficial level. If a show actually understands why those cliches works and can execute them with knowledge and understanding while putting their own twist on the formula, it can turn out very well. This is not a show that does that. At all. What’s really depressing is that there are still two more magical girlfriends at magical school with my magical harem fighting using summoned magical weapons against magical CGI monsters shows left. This is only the second with a Norse bend too after Thor in Absolute Duo. Japan, you have a problem. 

Anyway to say something actually about an episode that spared no effort in not sparing efforts, I think the best part of this episode was all the misspelled words. “Asugar,” okay, maybe. It’s Scandanavian and using Google is hard. But “Enermy”? Lord knows there wasn’t action, comedy, or even fanservice that was supposed to entertain. It’s less repellant than Testament’s first episode, but that’s mostly accomplished by not doing much of anything. If anything, it reminded me of Material Brave with its island, combative blonde with a ribbon stapled to the side of her head, and dickless protagonist. If you’re not familiar with Material Brave, consider yourself blessed. It’s trying for a more competent kind of male lead, but still wallows in the same godawful misunderstandings. He also looks like a 12 year old who got lost on his way to a boy scout meeting, so they’re not helping their case. Most of the episode is devoured by exposition regardless, which I’d be more annoyed by if the female lead didn’t sound like a helium balloon deflating, so any break from listening to that is appreciated.

Production’s weak, action’s basically nonexistent, and the episode was consumed by a gigantic wall of exposition. What am I supposed to be looking forward to here? More exposition? Another comical scene where he’s called a pervert? I’d place it below Testament in the Crap Off For Magical Girlfriend Show fight, but at least that provoked some kind of reaction.

Next Episode:

Your hammer is unwieldy.