天下制覇

That can't possibly be comfortable.

Impressions:

Another episode that I feel like I should have enjoyed more than I actually did. It's colorful, it's actually animated, it didn't spent 15+ of its 22 minutes soullessly reciting the tedium of its universe, characters, and settings… but there was never really a moment that it clicked for me. Which isn't to say there wasn't obnoxious and unneeded announcements about the painfully obvious either, just somewhat fewer than usual. I think a large part of that is that the episode's pacing was all over the place and it went out on a sour note. It loves to bounce around in time as a weak attempt to foreshadow that some future event or reveal will be great instead of just impressing now. For two, that conversation in the car in the middle dragged this to a grinding halt halfway through that it never recovered from; blasting past what should've probably been at least a Character of the Week story in the last few minutes of the episode. It's something that would've worked a lot better with the main characters being a little more incidental, ala the way that Batman TAS liked to frame its stories.

Speaking of the main duo, the magical girl is incredibly shouty and obnoxious, so the primary focus being on her probably also contributed to what bothered me here, especially with how noisy the scoring and bright the visuals tend to be in the first place. The protagonist isn't nearly as bad, but I don't like the way he's handled thus far, particularly at the end with chronologically bouncing around to pretend like he's super cruel but is actually a big softy. It's manipulative for no good reason since its taken back barely a minute later. They're also hammering the mystery of his affairs and his past with certain magical girls who keep talking to the little man who lives in their cleavage a bit too much.

Next Episode:

Dog boy.