天下制覇

The fun game for children of all ages.

Impressions:

The original tv incarnation of this was kind of like a not-as-terrible Akiba's Strip; a mess, and unsure what it wanted to be, but it did genuinely amusing things almost off-handedly in between lots and lots of bleghness. That started in medias res though. All the actors were already in place. We were dropped right into the middle of magical girls fighting mostly naked men and little girls carrying artillery twice their size while being assisted by a Tuxedo Mask knockoff who showed up nothing but a cape and a towel to do absolutely nothing. And it was nothing but better for it. Here, we get a completely paint by numbers magical girl opening episode, complete with magical pet (voiced obnoxiously by Kugimiya Rie!). Tour of 'wacky' characters, complete with exposition explaining their gimmicks. One of them has a dick. I'll leave it to you to guess which one it is. Weirdly though, they skip the one dressed like a sheep who talks like she's riding the valium express straight to an early death. The existing magical girl is a sullen "I don't need no help from nobody and you're an idealistic brat" type deal, but I'm sure she'll learn the true value of friendship.

So yeah, approximately zero surprises at all, and unlike something like Symphogear, doesn't have the animation, violence, weight, or music to make the cliche opening actually exciting or fun. We're just going through the motions. Nothing that might stand out, because that might challenge expectations, and that's bad. Granted, at least their weapons are actual weapons, so in theory, it's not as awful as it could be. In actual practice, the grunts just kind of lazily poke at her with their spears, and comically spin before disappearing when smacked with a mace. And the monster du jour is just some guy with a shamisen and a few insect-themed sentai reject friends. He absorbs… something from people for… some reason, so we're not even ahead of the magical girl curve on exposition.