天下制覇

"I'm the antagonist! Look at me! I'm so antagonizing!"

The primary broadcast station (AT-X) hasn't announced a delay/recap episode next week yet, but every other station has, so this may be off next week. I'll assume it will be and think up something to post in its stead. It may at this point be a screed on the complete infallibility of the Japanese protagonist, since I've gotten that thought into my head lately and the recent (as in last couple years) of terrible writing in anime have made it hard to dislodge. Oh, also, the new SHChara is apparently a spiritual sequel to Wizard Climber. Neat.

Impressions:

Another episode testing my patience more than anything else. Supposedly, it's about how mages aren't really all that and the 'baddies' are fighting back against them, except half of it is done through briefing reports, a quarter of it is done by showing random non-Tanya mages getting shot up, and the last quarter is Tanya effortlessly soloing entire battalions. There's a weak reminder that the god-ish thing is around and supposedly the big bad, but it just pops up to go "Hey! Remember me!" and is gone again. Doesn't attack or anything. Simply goes "Neener neener neener" and gets shot a couple times, so Tanya can grit her teeth and curse her powerlessness just after demonstrating her omnipotence over everything she beholds. So no, they're not really building up the threat factor or upping the scales here. At least make it seem like there's some kind of struggle. Nobody believes the Tie-Dye Terror is going to defeat Superman, but he can at least stymie him by throwing some hostages into a laundry machine or leaving some garishly colored t-shirt bombs around town to add some tension.

So, of course, this is clearly a story going way too fast and consuming the animation budget too heavily. No wonder they need a week off to recap before they get right back to 12 more minutes of men in smoke-filled rooms shuffling paperwork.

Next Episode:

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