天下制覇

No! Bad JC Staff! Bad!

Impressions:

Sigh. This show’s certainly not making it easy. The first 15 minutes of it were bad. Under produced and almost nothing but a stream of talking heads from start to finish with the damn narration still interrupting damn near everything. Ryouko smiles as she befriends dogs… so the narrator interjects "RYOKO LIKES DOGS," followed by Ryoushi walking out and untying them… "THESE ARE RYOUSHI’S DOGS!"  Then Ryoko harumphs and blushes followed by the narrator pointing out that she’s being tsundere. Thanks. I almost couldn’t put the clues together. It’s like watching a show with a four year old. Maybe next time you should include blinking letters and a giant news ticker scrolling across the screen. Then, to make matters worse, they tried to sell some drama over who that mysterious stone thrower from the start of episode one could have been. It’s a bloody mystery.

Things improved immensely in the final quarter of the episode though. I really loved that they actually finally put the two divergent narrative streams to good use for once when Ryoko was trying to steel herself, and the action was enjoyable to watch although given the first half, it’s not hard to see where the budget came from. Of course, they had to ruin that entire scene by playing the OP as an insert song over it. Is this JC Staff’s new thing? Make sure that the OP gets played in at least every other episode in every show they make? I would have been happier without the montaging of the rest of the group too, particularly the characters just showing up to be silly in what was clearly meant to be Ryoushi’s moment of triumph. Let’s stick with the boxers and tasers, not with the brooms and wooden lollipops. The big stirring reveal that Ryoushi is some kind of slingshot god was… well… whatever. At least his testicles dropped, although I have no idea how we’re supposed to swallow that his weak little uppercut was more effective than a boxer’s electrified uppercut. If the entire episode had been like the last 5 minutes though, I wouldn’t have had anything to complain about.

Oh yeah, and the episode was kind of based on The Boy Who Cried Wolf in about the same way that Koihime Musou is based on the Romance of the Three Kingdoms.