天下制覇

 

And the things they put in their eyes.

Impressions:

First off… bizarrely, the OP was in English for this episode, and possibly the future. It was actually pretty decent, all things considered. I’ll rip it and post it in a few minutes.

Well, I’m happy that the show has a villain and what appears to be an extended storyline, but not happy at all that the first villainette is obviously some misguided little loli golem (alright, homunculus) that they predictably drove off through misunderstandings and will then win back when they manage to convince it that family doesn’t make people fight, blah blah, etc etc see Nanoha seasons 1-3 for more. Lapis (though I swear that half the characters call her ‘Nabis’) isn’t really that bad of a character, even if she does look like she crawled out of a French prostitute’s closet, and now that she has a basilisk’s eye in her, she might a bit more highly-combustable fun, but I’ve just seen the archetype eight thousand times over and don’t really relish seeing it again. Does anybody else think that Lapis’ brother looks a bit like he escaped here straight from Death Note?

Otherwise, the episode was decent. Itsuki versus the basilisk somewhat lacked the punch of his usual fights because it happened about 10 minutes in instead of near the end. The basilisk also looked suspiciously similar to Addie’s father in snake-form. Maybe they’re getting lazy with the designs. I suppose this would probably count as the Nekoyashiki introduction episode, since there was a lot of him, especially through the second half, but it didn’t really feel like it. If you’re curious about the time jumps, Honami’s winter clothes and Addie’s absence tell me that it’s chronologically last and we’ll hopefully stay in this ‘correct’ time period at least while this arc plays out.

Rental Magica English OP