天下制覇

That was the most half-assed attempt at regicide ever.

Impressions:

This remained blithely idiotic to the very end. Turns out Zelda was a rogue crazy person, just in it to be evil, and as soon as everyone showed up to save Charlotte, she simply futzed away and crisis totally averted. The antagonists we've been fussing around with in the background for the entire season? They had a little car chase. That was their contribution to this episode. And then literally everything simply went right back to how it was before. The end. Friendship power! I think the whole thing existed only to serve Charlotte giving a dumb speech about how she'd totes sacrifice herseful for the good of the people, because she's the Jesusest, thereby stopping the revolution in its tracks because they were so overcome by the sheer depth of empathy a teenager has. Give me a break.

Final Thoughts:

The more this leaned on its writing, the worse it got because all it knew how to do was simper endlessly about friendship. For at least an episode or two, the director had the helm and could at least fake it. Perhaps all the friendship crap could've worked had they actually tested it in any meaningful way, but all they had was the typical dickwaving contest over who cared the most about the other. And even that was just one little bit. Taking that aside, all three of the side characters had fundamentally the same backstory of an abusive father, with no actual character arc in the present, let alone role in the climax of the damn show, calling into question why they even existed at all. Especially the particularly shrieky one who was godawful at everything, yet still got to be the most omnipresent. Even the main duo weren't going to win any awards for personality; their main trait being "cares a whole lot about the other," just at different volumes. Perhaps that's why the initial episodes weren't as hard to stomach, because their motives were still cyphers.

There was promise at the start, but it was far too toothless to make anything notable of itself, and filled with a ridiculous amount of chaff. The second half especially was nonsense on top of bad writing on top of particularly weak melodrama that built only to a hasty climax that resolved nothing. Probably could've made a neat OVA, but as a series, was about 8 episodes and 14 speeches on friendship and caring about each other too long.