天下制覇

Now featuring… uh… these guys.

I like how I got back to the hotel 10 minutes before the episode appeared in the usual places, and yet because of the terribad wireless, it was another 90 minutes before I could watch it. Last time I’ll need to deal with this nonsense for awhile at least. Although I am in airports all day tomorrow, so don’t count on Occult Academy until the wee hours or Tuesday.

Impressions:

If you’re an optimist and hoping that the recap last week meant more budget for this week, then good news. You won’t suffer from the crippling emotional trauma that optimism brings for much longer. I can barely remember when this show looked good anymore. Off-kilter art and stills abounded, particularly through the first half, but also especially bad at the very end. The little zombie fight was decent enough, but there was a lot of clever direction to cover up the lack of animation (like showing feet instead of people, or covering the camera with blood instead of showing shots/bodies). I do appreciate slick direction, but 95% of the time, the director is just picking the perfect upskirt angle for panty shots. It was also yet another one of those transitional "the cast is moving from A to B so… suddenly… zombies!" so wasn’t exactly thrilling in any way.

The writing remains as poor as ever. Shidou is impossible to take seriously when he’s literally molesting students with the others watching in fascination, and then practically in tears the moment he’s threatened by Hirano. The episode also began with a very lengthy strip-tease by the new character slowly peeling off layer after layer of clothing. Subtle. The deus ex machina of the entire team meeting up again was only matched by the deus ex machina that surrounded them all by zombies on a bridge in the first place. You’d think that they would realize at some point that if they stopped trying to go anywhere, they wouldn’t need to fight them, but then again, if you squared the collective IQ of every character on the show, you’d probably still have something imaginary.

Preview:

Good bloody god.