天下制覇

Holy fluctuating animation, Batman!

Impressions:

A rather good episode, even if all the fighting was decent at best. I swear that there must have been at least 15 stills of Miu hitting a sailor scout. There were some moments of relative quality, but they were all immediately followed up by some truly cringeworthy stuff. Just look at Miu’s face around the 16:45 mark. That’s up there with some of the terrible terrible Nanoha budget saving techniques from season 1. Ew. Just… ew. Still, the rest of it was pretty fun. It was just a practice in rapidly flipping between having a budget and not for the entire episode.

Summary:

Freya is facing off with sports bra Miu, but Kisara leaps in. We also get to see Niijima drop Berserker in a pit again, but this time, one of his cronies dumps glue down the pit. Berserker immediately just jumps off a wall and out, onto the fence above Niijima. He realizes that Niijima is really weak and pathetic and moves to finish him. Before his punch can hit, Siegfried grabs his fist and stops him, letting Niijima escape. Berserker and Seig start their battle.

Miu is dealing with the sailor scouts while Freya and Kisara taunt eachother. Kisara is the first to attack, but Freya easily blocks her and knocks her over. One of the sailor scouts tries to attack the downed Kisara, but Miu kicks her out of the way. Kisara repeats her personal way of the ninja and attacks again.

Back with Sieg and Berserker, Berserker is annoyed by the Shinpaku and tries to leave Sieg to attack Niijima, but Sieg won’t let him. Berserker starts beating on Sieg, who takes the hits and tries to use the momentum to make his own attacks, but Berserker blocks them all. The masters are walking by and see Berserker beating on Siegfried. Finally, Sieg tries to flip over the fence to attack, but Berserker tags him in the gut with a clean hit.

He thinks that this is bad, but gets up, singing with his eyes glowing. He moves toward Berserker, and takes an elbow to the face, but grabs him from behind. Berserker asks why he’s using this, and Sieg tells him that the Shinpaku is a team unlike Ragnarok. He then uses his final technique, the Requiem Buster and leaps backwards into the water. He doesn’t let go, even when they’re under. Berserker suddenly flexes and starts powering up. There’s a small burst, and then Siegfried’s hat floats to the surface.

Niijima is still running through town mostly naked, looking for Siegfried.

Berserker pops up, but Siegfried doesn’t, so Sakaki and Akisame jump to save him… both are aiming for the same sign. They manage to both land on it and they fish Siegfried out. Shigure is still going on about how Siegfried is a kappa, while Apachai is jauntily wearing Sieg’s hat. Sieg mutters out to save “the alien.”

Freya and Kisara’s fight is not going particularly well for Kisara. She’s no match for Freya’s rippling sixpack. Kisara remembers back to when she used to streetfight against some huge beast of a guy. Despite her better technique and reach, he was just too strong. She was about to be defeated, but then Freya appeared and knocked him out with one punch.

Kisara then started looking up to Freya and helping her with her training. Kisara asks her how she made a punch so strong, and Freya punches at some walls. It leaves perfect circles, and Freya shows that she’s actually palming little sticks which she combines to make a staff. She tells Kisara that there are no rules in fighting and anything to shorten the gap between men and women is ‘fair’ game.

Kisara, back in the present, doesn’t buy her line anymore and tells Freya how Kenichi taught her that there’s a different kind of strength. The resolve to be stupid, but protect what’s important to you, and that’s a better strength than simple physical power. Yada yada. Kisara giving the speech instead of Kenichi is no less lame.

Kisara attacks again, and this time manages to avoid Freya’s attack and kicks her in the back. Miu smiles to herself about how much Kenichi is changing people. The sailor scouts try to attack her sports bra from behind again, but Miu barely even pays attention to them as she thinks about what Kenichi is doing. In fact, the elder is standing over a KOed Kenichi with a giant pair of clubs. They get ready to go another round, but Kenichi runs off in fear.

Back to the fight, Freya is wailing on Kisara pretty badly now. She splits her sticks to alter her style of attack for close in and manages to knock Kisara down. Miu keeps beating the hell out of the sailor scouts in the battle of bad stills. She finishes off all of them and tells the downed Kisara to do her best.

I’d like to make a special note here that Miu’s face as Kisara got up was nothing short of fucking horrifying.

Kisara gets up and trots to attack again, this time thinking about how Miu moves and trying to mimick her light movements instead of Freya’s raw power. She dodges easily. Miu immediately recognizes it and starts giving her hints, telling her to see the center of the attack and whatnot.

Kisara looks down on Freya and sees it. She zooms in and uses her double kick to slam down on Freya’s stick, shattering it and slamming Freya to the ground. She neglects to actually land though, so ends up pretty scrapped up too. Freya gets up to attack, with her broken pointy sticks. She then drops them and says that she’s happy with how much Kisara has grown. Freya says that if she fights using those, it’d actually be dangerous.

Miu picks one up and says that she recognized Freya’s style and that she’s a real martial artist, and wouldn’t use something like knives to actually try to kill somebody. Freya parts with them, saying that Kisara has become truly powerful. Kisara falls to the ground, crying.

At school, the Shinpaku’s defeat is the talk of the class, even though Kenichi is still absent. Warlock wonders what’s really going on and heads to the Shinpaku meeting room. The flag lackey is there to fill him in and tells him to pass along a message to Kenichi.

At an abandoned warehouse, flagboy and Kisara’s kicking lackey are meeting with Niijima. Niijima suddenly thinks that the colar the kicker dude gave him was trapped, so forces him to drink it. It really did have a laxative in it. A bunch of punks surround the warehouse, lead by Loki and are here to finish off Niijima once and for all.