天下制覇

I feel cheated by this.

Impressions:

Seriously ARMS? In your show about clones of samurai running around everywhere, the power of love, and random displacer beasts and tentacle monsters popping up, this is how you end things? With the main character dead? I kept waiting for her to fall out of the sky again but apparently not. All we get is a star shining when Muneakira finally turns his back. Don’t get me wrong, I like bittersweet endings more than most people, but this was so far out of line with everything that this show has done so far that it just plain doesn’t work. Plus, I’m sure if/when the inevitable sequel comes (this is ARMS after all), she’ll pop right back up as if nothing happened.

Anyway, solid episode otherwise with only a little bit of "love power" (shut up, Totali) nonsense in the middle of it. Continuous action from start to finish without any real overtures to adding to the flimsy pretense for a plot (thank god), but much of it was very Dragonbally, consistent of flying inkblots bouncing off each other and posing with stills. At least Muneakira finally used his sword… to cut tentacles from raping him. Well, dude’s got priorities. Nia got her kiss from Yoshihiko too I suppose, not that it mattered since Jubei was the only one who fought anything other than tentacles or the giant motionless bubble. I’m not sure why Muneakira needed to pick Yukimura up for her own love powerup kiss, but at least she wasn’t licking herself like Gisen was or mounting her hammer like Naoe was. Still waiting for Naoe to be relevant! I’m not sure what the monochrome was about really. I kept expecting them to do something interesting with it, but no… it was just monochrome for the sake of monochrome.

Final thoughts at the bottom.

PS, I’m aware of Badlands Rumble, but have a huge holiday party to go to today. I’ll get to it on either Monday or Tuesday.

Final Thoughts:

A strong start and unique artistic design gave way to time filler and an extremely poorly paced plot. I enjoyed select parts of both the serious and the comedic sides of the show, but it did a very poor job of mixing the two and the lack of (wait for it) focus didn’t help matters much either. Too much of the show is spent meandering around getting nothing accomplished but not being funny enough to get away with it cleanly either. All it ended up doing is compressing the plot into about four episodes that they had to rush through like a ostrich on speed, leaving characters like Nia, Yoshihiko, and Gisen sorely undeveloped and the characters that were just there for comic relief completely out of their element.

The show was decently produced for the most part, but gets away with a lot due to style. Unfortunately, the action does taper off dramatically after the first couple episodes. Muneakira was also… well, a lie. Master swordsman, my butt. The rest of the main cast is solid though, especially for shows of this nature and it’s always nice to see characters open with their feelings instead of trapped in a sea of angst for no reason. Jubei was probably the worst handled of the core cast, but I could still just be cross over her sudden death at the end. She still wasn’t particularly well developed or explained even to the very end though.

All in all, it’s not a decent show with an out-of-place ending. The style is the main noteworthy thing about it and it’s otherwise just another relatively generic action comedy. There’s nothing wrong with that, mind you, and it’s the genre that I enjoy the most, but it’s not going to win any converts or awards for its execution either.