天下制覇

You ride ‘er, Ichika.

Impressions:

I guess it was an okay episode, but I really don’t like the way that they’ve handled Houki or Whitey here at all. Houki is a production of basically the entire season. She sat on the sidelines from about episodes 3-9 and is now consuming entire episodes with her angstiness over ignoring random boats. Meanwhile, Whitey still isn’t much of an antagonist to me. It hasn’t really actually done much of anything and only even beat Houki and Ichika together because Ichika dragged Houki naked into some kind of magical dimension so that he could berate her about her win-at-all-costs mentality, followed by immediately getting himself shot down protecting her. Heavy drama was never one of this show’s strengths, but hey… end of the season so let’s spew some of that out for ten minutes to make the show deep. Because Houki’s ribbon burning was symbolic of her loss of innocence or something. DEEP.

The battle wasn’t the most impressive that this show’s had either, which also contributed to Whitey not really doing much for me. The fight against Laura was a lot more physical and visceral, which lended it a more savage edge to it. So far, this has had Ichika surfing on Houki’s back and Whitey spinning as little lasers rain down. It’s hard to take the former seriously and hard to find the latter dangerous. Also, like I said, random naked people having moralistic talks in the middle of combat would not be one of the things I look for in my action scenes. Well, I’m okay with the nakedness. Half of it at least. But let’s keep the moral lecturing elsewhere. Preferably in another show entirely. Maybe not surf her anymore either.

Preview:

I don’t think that you’re dressed for combat, Houki.