天下制覇

  

Maybe someone thought they were making a western and needed bar music.

Impressions:

I don’t think everyone was on the same page when making this, but whoever was put in charge of the music I’m pretty sure thought they were making vaudeville. The director was also channeling his inner windmill because Dutch angles ahoy. They’re a shortcut for making any scene better! Neither of which really did the comedy any favors, but it did help to fill the time with something to think about between Nagato making stupid faces which was the majority of the humor, although it got more referential in the competition at the end. Note, referential, not parody. At least it does have an animation budget to work with. That’s something the other shows today (so far) can’t brag about.

Unsurprisingly, it’s pretty much as expected on the box, a really standard school comedy thing in the vein of School Rumble, B-Gata, Place to Place, etc, just with rewritten Haruhi characters. Which is kind of a problem for me since I don’t particularly like Haruhi characters, but I suppose mileage will vary. For the most part, it’s servicable enough, although really not ambitious with the humor or characters, which I guess just sets a bar for how woeful Dungeon and Re-Kan were with its. Nor is it high brow, lest anybody think I’ll go without bra-less Mikuru’s chest flailing across the entire screen. Nagato and Kyon are not strong leads for the comedy though and have as much chemistry as helium. Noble gas joke!

I didn’t laugh at anything in the episode, nor do I expect this to actually go anywhere or do anything so I’m not particularly eager to see more. Maybe Haruhi fans will get better mileage out of it, but hell if I know. I’m not in with the dynamics of rewrites/reboots to appease fan pairings in order to squeeze a little more blood out of stones.