天下制覇

This episode was very very silly.

Impressions:

I have absolutely no idea what this episode was doing. 50% of it was spent on Accelerator getting lectured alternatively by brain (telepathy), by a dapper young gent, or by phone. All three of them were deliciously budget friendly and as tantalizingly boring as watching paint dry. I’m not sure that they reached double digit counts for frames animated in the telepathic recruitment speech or the later slum debriefing. Accel was also a CG magnet, attracting CG soldiers and CG hallways in between cocking guns with his face. I’m fairly certain that is not safe. Or practical. Then it was off to the slums for another long phone conversation and a little light man hunting because this is apparently how we’re ending the show next week. Hunting down some random guy in the slums. And the worst part is that even with all this blatant budget saving, the rest of the episode still looked dodgy as hell. I think Touma’s head was actively mutating through the episode.

The other 50% or so was Touma doing gag comedy. Yes, I am counting starting an episode with a dramatic touching insert song for Hyouka crying about how she doesn’t want to be a monster before that entire thing completely vanishes from the episode as gag comedy. I’m not sure what else to call it. I felt like I had missed five minutes of the show somewhere with how they just dumped me right into it and then dropped it again for about five straight minutes of watching Touma eat while a parade of women comically vie for his attention. Shouldn’t Index have gotten to at least say hello to Hyouka or something? Or maybe we could have had some resolution about the avatar for a demi-god now standing in a hole? No? We’re jumping forward to lunch at school? Uh, sure thing, JC Staff. Sure, there was some hubub on Touma’s side about a storm’s a comin’. But it’s hard to take that seriously while Aisa is doing slapstick and Fukiyose is basically sitting in Touma’s lap. Kudos to her for putting the goods at his eye level approximately six inches away from his face. He can’t miss ’em now. Although I’m not sure if she’s just desperate to get him to notice her, or if the largest part of her is just being inexorably pulled in by the gravitational forces eminating from the dense singularity that Touma has somehow cobbled into a working brain.

FYI, GOSICK’s off for another week. It was planning to take a break after episode 10 anyway with a special in the interim. That’s what’s airing this week, and if there’s anything less intelligent than the show itself, it would be watching the people who are making that fiasco talk about it. God, I can’t wait until next season. Edit: It actually ended up being a clips montage episode. Even worse.

Preview:

I’m not sure I follow.