天下制覇

Oh boy! More flashbacks!

Impressions:

Ugh. Of the last 3 episodes/70 minutes of the show, about 10 minutes have taken place in the present era, which leaves around an hour of flashbacks. There’s a severe issue with your pacing if you need to take an hour of timeouts just to explain why what’s happening is important. I’d really really really been hoping that they’d cut back a lot on this and make things more personal for Rhiannon and Arthur instead, but apparently it was not meant to be. Hell, just scaling back the out of control power creep here would have been great. It wasn’t enough for them to be fighting the evil oppressive empire lead by genocidal angels, so let’s just drop the empire thing, add in an ancient war, and have them fight orcs. And for that matter, why the blazes would the Angels be using orcs instead of humans in the first place? What ever happened to that pursuit of beauty and perfection? Or the empire’s giant armies for that matter?

Ahem. Excuse me. I think I’ve still got some leftover bile from Princess Lover, and as we near a month of little else but flashbacks, I’m probably getting a bit more surly than the show deserves. Still though, it’s hard to take this giant evil encroaching army seriously you see them for fewer than 10 minutes in the three episodes after their introduction, and every single time you do, they’re being completely obliterated by the protagonists’ various magical super powers. Yeah, so Taliesin died… who ares. He was a spoony bard who had about 5 minutes of screentime once he joined the good guys. Lydia’s red knights… the ones who leaped through trees like demented apes… were still a bigger threat to Arawn’s army than this supposed evil army of doom, and even they were still trumped by the cave troll and the only thing that has pushed the protagonists into a corner so far… a handful of zombies. Why aren’t the angels just using those? Oh right, then they’d easily win, and we can’t have that.

Brief Summary:

Arawn sends the main party off to fetch Pwyll’s magic sword that can kill the Angels. When Arthur touches it, he’s sucked into a flashback about Pwyll, the leader of the elves. They’re under siege, and pray to the heavens, but get no answer. Later, he finds Primula alone in the forest. His orders are to bring all the humans to Avalon, so he tries to take custody of her, but Arawn stops him and warns Pwyll that he’ll have to fight Arawn if he wants to take the girl. He gives Pwyll the godslayer Drcwryn (screw Welsh!) to make it a fair fight and also forces Pwyll to think about what’s really happening to the humans that are brought to Avalon.

Primula laughs at Pwyll and then asks Arawn what the buzzing thing flying around is. Pwyll is astounded that she can talk. Arawn reveals that he’s the 13th Angel, and Pwyll prostrates himself and asks for guidance. Arawn tells him to lead his people and become free from the rule of the heavens. Pwyll agrees and as their pact, the two reveal their true names to each other (Regius for Pwyll). Months later, Arawn is grievously injured by the angels during a battle, but because of his sacrifice, the war is all but won. Just before Arawn falls into his healing sleep, the two use Drcwryn to seal off the world from heaven.

Arthur finally pulls out Drcwryn and all the baddies around them disappear. He then shouts "I have the power" and transforms into He-Man, Master of the Universe and the party gets ready to join Arawn and defeat Skeletor.

Preview:

The siege of Castle Greyskull.