天下制覇

Strong female characters.

Impressions:

My first thought after an episode introducing a new character solely to be a hostage while pretending Tessa is a mental invalid to use her as bait and Chidori is shown to be quite literally banished to the kitchen while helplessly pining for her man was "Man, this series' contempt for women is really coming home to roost." At least Tessa didn't throw another tantrum about how she was a big girl that needs to be taken seriously. All the heavy lifting was left to Some Random Dude. Even Mao's sole purpose was to pop up and go "I'm Mao!" and then sit out the rest of the episode. Of course, it also then spent about thirty seconds on Sousuke grunting and staring at a door in horror as an attempt at a cliffhanger, so maybe it just hates all its named characters.

But we're here for the sprawling plot, right? A third of the episode focused on a doctor investigating Tessa's past, then unceremoniously dropped while Tessa's plan to capture Some Other Random Dude fell apart when he did the unthinkable and ran away, about five minutes on random punchup between Some Guy and Some Other Guy that happened to take place sort of nearby them in the traditional "invincible until extremely vincible" fashion every fight in this show goes, and then we have just enough time to cook omelettes with Chidori and stare at doors with Sousuke. Boy, was this worth the week wait. There's about an 80% chance I'm simply done with this in a couple weeks when the new season starts up. It's going nowhere and only making me wonder if the original always had this kind of antipathy towards its characters.