天下制覇

Well, at least somebody finally slapped Rinko.

Impressions:

Ugh. It started okay, but then Rinko started yelling and whining to the super-oni about not understanding how a girl feels and Yuuto literally just walked off the edge of the cliff before saving Himari with the power of friendship and a platonic hug. At least there was a lot of action, even if most of it wasn’t really that impressive. The big battle against Himari was probably the most interesting of the three skirmishes, but I question how Rinko and Yuuto were able to take hits that shredded the only semi-corporeal sentient teacup. The fox also went down a little too easy once Himari got her Rinko fueled "go ovaries!" speech powerup.

Outside of that, there really wasn’t anything of note. Yuuto finally used his magic power to turn Himari into a magical girl to take out the big bad, so my prediction was slightly off. After that, his power disappears and the status quo is completely restored. Bleh. The thing I found most interesting about the ending was Rinko’s tie. What the hell was she wearing? Is she secretly a member of Huey Lewis and The News? That would… be kinda hot. Everybody loves Huey Lewis. In any case… it’s about as generic and dull of an ending as you can get, with Yuuto still having about as much use as a magical cellphone in most magical girl shows. He probably can’t even vibrate.

Final thoughts below.

Final Thoughts:

If I had to sum it up in a word, it would be "competent." Well… except for the music. Good lord, Zexcs. What the hell happened here with that? Their audio shortcomings aside, it was better animated than most, stayed consistent on that front, and unlike many other action shows, actually had consistent action. That also leads into one of the problems with the show too though. The direction was very very dull. I feel like I should be breaking out the charts on engagement theory and the flow of a plot… maybe even work in a monomyth note… but what it boils down to is that the story never really comes to any kind of height or climax. It just keeps going, and going, and going, and now it’s stopped. Don’t get me wrong though, many ostensibly plot-driven shows don’t even get that far, or worse, try to cram it into the last 20 minutes of the show to pretend like the entire thing had a plot in the first place. I’ll spare you a sexual metaphor about blue balls. Oops. Too late.

The main problem with the show is that while things kept happening, it was never really leading anywhere. None of the characters grew, changed at all, or learned a damn thing. Yuuto’s clearly the biggest issue, but I think I’ve made my displeasure for everything about him clear enough already. The rest of the cast isn’t all that much better either, but at least there’s very little focus on them so it’s not as noticeable. The end result is that they’re just there for eyecandy and a few laughs, which would be perfectly fine if the core cast wasn’t just as metaphorically flat as they are.

So, I feel like I’ve said it a lot for the past few days, but this ends up being a decently made, but ultimately forgettable show. It does a lot of things right, but there are entirely too many rough edges still showing through to shrug them off.