天下制覇

Word to your mother.

Impressions:

Just like I feared. A-1 is bound and determined to piss away episodes on random nonsense. This arc is about a snow girl ghost that Chihiro accidentally summons, and since the Scooby Gang can’t ever leave anything alone, they have to spend two episodes resolving it. At least Uchida seems to have washed his hands of it and would rather sit around and make doe-eyes at Mikaze. I never thought that I’d applaud him for doing anything, even if he did apparently throw his giant stack of papers into a fountain off-screen. I also question how Maya was a skeptic when part of the school curriculum is apparently raising the dead and not a single person bats an eye. Still better than the deus ex machine, but after 9 episodes, it sure would be nice if they stopped rewriting the universe. Chupacabres and mothmen? Too dangerous for the public to know about. Afterlife machines and raising the dead? Let’s teach classes on them. Yeah, great.

The episode was better than most of the introductory arc episodes for this show though and JK had some good moments, but just like most of the series, it was completely squandered time on a literally fabricated trivial thing. Maybe even moreso since it obviously has nothing to do with the plot and it promises to drag out another episode. That means that Kozue’s arc and the big conclusion will have had about the same amount of focus. And that’s assuming that they actually get back to the plot in a couple episodes. Way to prioritize, A-1. Maybe you should have focused on something smaller than THE APOCALYPSE, FIRE AND BRIMSTONE OVER THE LAND, PLAGUES OF ALIENS, DOOMSDAY FOR MANKIN if you wanted to dick around on Scooby Doo mysteries for 75% of the show. It didn’t have too much melodrama from the protagonists at least, particularly in the face of Akari’s generic-as-hell sob story, although I certainly could have done without them literally sitting down around the table to give Akari’s past in one big dump. Is storytelling really that so difficult that you have to just toss up a talking head to lay everything out?

Preview:

Akari’s death and resolution.