天下制覇

  

Don’t you see? The feelings.

Impressions:

The fundamentally mistaken belief that formed the backbone of this episode was “the longer things are, the more weight they have,” but rub anything long enough and it soon chafes. I’m not going to try to stretch that metaphor any further. We really could have skipped the entire angsting period and gone right to the self-destructive behavior and the point would have gotten across, maybe moreso since they wouldn’t have built everything up just to have some handwaving twaddle over food feelings to… I don’t even know what. It’s like their view is that grieving/depression are overcome simply by telling somebody to feel better, and that in itself is enough for the narrative. We’re not feeling better for any reason, just to feel better. And it cuts itself extra deep when it’s already supposedly got the MiB supposedly running around, spiriting off teenagers, so when the only proof of death is officials going “Uh, yeah, she, uh, died… off screen. Don’t worry about the details. Here’s an empty casket. She’s uh, gone forever or whatever,” it already might as well skip the grieving period and jump right to her showing up in an opera mask working for the man.

Other things not helping was the utterly inane and directionless ‘end’ to his little angstfest. “Eat this. It’s full of feelings.” “You’re right. I have feelings again. But now what?” “Come back to school.” “Okay.” Christ. At least swear revenge or to catch those responsible or something. I really can’t help but compare it in my mind to a similar scene in Duel Savior, mostly since it was one of my favorites in the game to translate, as eye-rolling as some of Taiga’s “I am the night” monologues got during it. Aside from succinctness and lasting about a quarter the length and involving a hell of a lot more characters, DS’s was all about expressing frustration and emotion, while this was 12 straight minutes of sitting on the couch, feeling sorry for himself, with the occasional aside to do slapstick.