天下制覇

  

It’s the Japanese way.

Impressions:

I was originally going to ramble aimlessly for a couple paragraphs about playing Oreshika since it’s my most recent “play while exercising” game, in particular how an apparently recessive trait of “enormous fox ears” randomly spawned itself from a bitchy grandmother who I had murdered a few times prior to turning her into breeding stock onto a pair of twins. One of which was a swordsgirl whose default name was Shana, so I feel dirty using her, but she’s the tankiest mofo I’ve had, even before she inherited the family’s “Auto-Defend” armor. Her halberdier twin sister, on the other hand, is such a disappointment.

But the episode was very nearly on the bubble of being okay, so I guess I should probably say something about it. The action was much more together here than it has been for any other episode, especially Alisa’s little tantrum and stuffing people in her crotch before attempting to kick them in the face repeatedly. The fight in the second half against the CGI vegetable oil monsters wasn’t bad either. That said, the silence really let down the first half, and the music didn’t fit the second half. There was no tension to the action at all or any moment when it really felt like anybody was in even the slightest bit of danger as they effortlessly mow down armies of mooks yet don’t make any dent in the numbers until it decides that it’s shown enough and simply cuts to the end. It especially doesn’t work when they’re making all these ridiculous poses in a very futile attempt to look Hollywood cool.

So at a fundamental level, the episode was pretty hamstrung right from the start, even though they finally got their ducks in something approaching a row with the action and animation. It is a step forward, but it doesn’t solve the intrinsic problems with this show so far.

Next Episode:

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