天下制覇

 

Welcome back, Itoshiki.

Okay, I’m tired of waiting for a decent version.

Impressions:

Ugh. What an awful OP. At least the ED’s pretty good.

Not the greatest SZS episode ever made, but it was still pretty solid. They tried a bit too hard to reintroduce us to all the characters in the early going. The first 8 minutes was pretty much just a rapid fire reintroduction to 90% of the cast, each popping up, doing one or two things, and moving right back into the background. I did enjoy the DYNAMIC ACTION SEQUENCE, culminating with Ai laying down the punishment with apology headbutts, but the theme for that part (belief in character images and that Itoshiki’s a bad influence in his students) was pretty weak. I’m not really sure why they did this part in a film/widescreen style either. Shaft just being weird, probably.

Part 2 was definitely a fair shake stranger (things that happen at the start of spring), but it featured a lot of Chiri and they were doing that irritating beeping thing with her the entire time. It’s hard to enjoy jokes when there’s an incessant beeping slowly causing the back of your eyeballs to itch. I really hope they cut that out in the future, because Chiri’s one of my favorite characters and the beeping is really really annoying.

The final part was only about four minutes, but it did contain Rin in a bus hostess outfit. You can never have enough Rin. Blah blah blah, travelling is selfish and evil. There was barely enough time to even introduce the joke and let Itoshiki get a “zetsuboushita” in before they cut to the ED and then yet another “Let’s Draw Itoshiki!” segment. Kaede’s depiction is… interesting.

So, more of the same as the last couple. Maybe a little weaker than most of the episodes, and the OP is going to take some serious acclimation, but otherwise, it’s good to have Itoshiki back. This season needs some actual wit and energy. Badly.