天下制覇

 

Nothing says awesome like training and mock duels!

Impressions:

There was an absolutely massive drop in the animation quality this week that will seperate the critics in the crowd from those just here to watch people fighting. You can substitute choreography and animation for slick direction (see: Hearts, Triangle), and while Jyushin Enbu tries, it wasn’t good enough to keep me from rolling my eyes at the budget saving techniques. Most weren’t that bad, but some of the cuts… and especially the one or two times that they used a shrinking still to show Taito or Ryukou being blasted backwards… made me groan. I especially enjoyed hated the first time when beserk Taito fought Ryukou. They charged at eachother, and then Ryukou’s staff was just full on against Taito’s forehead.

The quick summary is: Berserk Taito pins the evil dude to a wall with some debris, Ryukou tries to stop him and gets beaten up for it until Leila wakes up and headbutts Taito back to his senses. Apparently her fleshy head packs more force than Ryukou’s staff. Taito trains for a little bit and then fights Ryukou again, this time to a draw.  Then, the three set out for their grand adventure.

It wasn’t all bad, but it’s very easy to be a critic of this series. It’s clearly trying to be clever with the direction, but the writing isn’t keeping up at all. The animation is also already starting to falter after only a single episode, so it’s already losing the only thing that really drew me to it in the first place. We’ll call next week the make or break episode between this and Rental Magica.