天下制覇

Love makes Yuko CAH-RA-ZY.

Impressions:

Probably the best episode of this season, thankfully. I’d been losing faith in Mondays for awhile. Not that I hold too much hope for the ‘present’ stuff, but it feels good to ignore it for awhile. At the very least, it meant that we didn’t have to see any more of Kei or Hiro or people I no longer want to see. Anyway, before I drift off topic further, this episode was completely centered in the past, and while there was a good deal of strange time and spatial hopping around from location to location, it mostly flowed pretty well. I do have some complaints with how badly they abused the tarot for their attempts at symbolism, but then again, I taught myself how to read the entire Major and Minor Arcana one summer on hour long bus rides into work. That’s the kind of nonsensical overeducation that should probably be completely ignored.

We got a new OP this week (sort of), which was basically a voiceless version of the normal OP but with all people removed from the animation. The ED was shifted to one completely centralized on Yuko too. The big developments in the Yuu/Yuko world is that pretty much everybody, Nagi included (in tears), push Yuu towards Yuko and he capitulates and admits that he loves her. She responds by going a little bit crazy and confessing that after Akira took her in, he started abusing her and now she’s just a lifeless and broken doll, slave to what other people want her to be. She’s also a bit ticked at Yuu for not protecting her or ever coming to save her.

Anyway, lots of interesting imagery this week, which was especially nice since the episode was essentially one long conversation from the beginning to the end. I do think that Yuu’s yelling after Yuko’s rants (and yes, rants are the right word since she really does lose it) were rather cheesy. There’s nothing quite like a "NOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOO!" to say ‘heavy drama.’ I do think it was a mistake to start the show off with Yuko stripping naked in front of Yuu, just because that was a very awkward scene and didn’t really fit well with how the last episode ended or lead into the OP particularly well. Overall though, I’m glad that for at least one episode, this show found its footing a little bit. Hopefully it can keep that momentum for another week or two, though I already dread returning to the present.

OP #2

ED #2