天下制覇

No mercy.

Impressions:

Very good first half of the episode, if a bit morally ambiguous. "Oh no, she got on a bus!" "Don’t worry, Kamiyan. We’ve already bombed it." I guess nobody else was riding public transport today. Unfortunately, the ending to Touma and Oriana’s fight happened after the eyecatch, so like most of the second half, it was abrupt and extremely awkward. After she had the advantage the whole first part of the fight by attacking from unusual angles and keeping him off-balance, he won by… running forward and punching her. Come on, JC Staff. At least try here. I realize that Touma’s power is to remove cool things from any action scene, but at least make him work for it. And no, punching her out of her top doesn’t win you any points. Especially not when I think a stiff breeze could do the same.

After the exciting first half, everything just got awkward. They had to finally dump out the actual plot for the episode and reason Oriana was hanging around (Magic sword! Evil church!) and then Touma had to go back to harem maintenance instead of… I don’t know… checking up on the girl that he let be exploded due to his stupidity. The ‘cliffhanger’ at the end of everybody gasping in unison about the woman being Misaka’s mother instead of sister was also horribly out of place, especially after showing Oriana running into Touma’s father as he was introducing himself as such. The last time she ran into anything, she left a bomb on it. I’d think that would be a much more interesting and exciting cliffhanger, even if mages seem to be leaving bombs all over the city just as an after thought. Although, given the preview that followed, it seems like we’re in for an orgy of weirdness to round out this arc.

Preview:

And now, for something completely different.