天下制覇

I’m not even sure what the hell this is.

Impressions:

Wow! A 21 minute episode! It’s like a normal episode! That’s amazing, Shaft! You’ve overcome all odds and made an episode just as long as every other studio does every week. Congratu-bloody-lations.

Whew. I better go lie down. I’m not sure my heart can take anymore excitement.

Anyway, unfortunately, despite somehow managing to make it a full 21 minutes it was a pretty poor episode. The first part was about half-assed demonstrations where every single joke was the same thing. "Down with X… but I support Y…" That’s not even a joke. That’s the bumper stickers that I see every day… or what passes for political debate in the US. The second part was a little closer to actual humor and was about how people assume things they don’t understand are funnier/better than they actually are. Striking close to home for the English anime world, I’m sure. The third part introduced Chiri’s sister, Tane (Kita-nee being the portmanteau of her name and a pun meaning "filthy"), who makes messes just to keep Chiri’s OCD from getting her into trouble. It wasn’t as lame as the other two, but at that point, I was completely out of it.

At least they didn’t top it off with a Drawing Itoshiki segment… not that it made spending an extra 30 seconds on unanimated storytime at the start any more bearable. Sigh. I miss the second season so much.