天下制覇

If only… if only…

Impressions:

100% totally as expected. Bleh. Hime Lancer fights Enjin Gilgamesh throwing snakes for about 10 seconds before everybody else arrives and he uses the power of "looking like Gin" to sucker punch Akina. Didn’t see that one coming. Half the team fights and beats Shinozuka by hitting him with a car. The other half tracks down Enjin Gilgamesh and saves him from letting Yae kick his ass, but he ruins it by slicing Lancer’s pretty scarf, so she creates a deus ex tornado to blow away all the cherry petals and save the day. Whoopie. Oh yeah, then she uses Excali Bolg to bat Gil into Caster’s energy beam and kill him. Caster then sews up Lancer’s scarf or something. Who knows. It wasn’t really important, unless you’re in the wholesale scarf business.

At least there were about 15 seconds of quality action in this episode. Sure, it may have been spread out across three different scenes, but they made me perk up for at least a moment, only to go back to sleep once the Enjin pontification started up again. This ending really was so predictable that it was painful. I think I could have storyboarded this two weeks ago, right down to Gin thanking Akina and asking him to keep protecting the city as he was sent off to wherever good spirits go when they’re energy balled. Enjin could have at least stabbed through Akina or something. Add a little more drama here. Also, since when could Kyosuke shoot lightning or Touka fly?

Totali will be pleased though, since Hime had ramen for the first time in over a month I believe.

Bleh.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

Final Thoughts:

Well, way back at the start, I said that this reminded me a lot of Rental Magica, and lo and behold, it really was. The series had a lot of potential early on and even through the middle, could have redeemed itself with a strong finish. Unfortunately, none of that ever really developed. Nobody really grew. Nobody matured. Nobody did anything more than just shake off whatever problem developed in the previous five minutes and then kill some goo monster. Even at the end, it was hard to really get behind (or even understand) what the fighting was really about. They never really gave a good idea of how life would be totally ruined if their city in the middle of absolutely nowhere were to lose its guardian thingies. Gin was also never developed at all, so saving him wasn’t really a concern. Enjin’s goals were also kind of laughable. He’ll prove that people can’t coexist by blowing them up. Sort of a self-fulfilling prophecy there, eh? Even any drama around the fight at the end was pretty much neutered by having the final solution nun and city god continuously lurking in the background.

So yeah, a very milquetoast show from start to finish. If you’ve been waiting on it to see the final reviews, I really don’t think it’s going to win any hardcore fans at all, and I imagine anybody with any doubt has long since jumped ship. Nothing about these last two episodes should really draw them into finishing the show either. There were the occasional glimpses that it could have been something more, but absolutely nothing in this show ever developed anywhere or became anything beyond what was already shown in the very first episode. I don’t think I could even tell you why Akina or Kotoha were so deadset on protecting the city. Boredom, I suppose. It’s not like they’ve got anything better to do in the city.

Overall, it wasn’t horrible, but I would be hardpressed to call much of anything about it aside from the soundtrack as particularly inspired or noteworthy. I expect it to be completely forgotten in 2 months and only referenced to as "one of those shows that Savage Genius was involved with." Hopefully next season Thursdays will be a bit better.