天下制覇

*Honk honk*

Just FYI, after Kurogane and a Brazilian told me I’d hate Hanasaku #2 and I opened it to a caterwauling OP, I decided to trust their intuition.

Impressions:

This remains a very mixed bag without any clear indication as to whether or not it’s going anywhere. I found Hayato’s Dracula’s middle portion to be utterly tedious for the most part (although Naru is cute), the initial portion with the naughty King Game to be amusing on a Kampfer-esque level, and only Shuusuke’s segment at the end to really be decent. It certainly wasn’t anywhere near as good as his segment last week though. Hiyoko’s not a bad foil to him though, especially acting completely straight when he blurts out terrible lines like asking what color her panties are, answering, then apologizing and checking to correct herself.

However, the production this week plummeted like an anvil tied to a boulder. Distance shots abounded and a lot of that visual energy from the first episode was completely missing. There was some janky art at times too, like Hayato’s ginormous flipper-like hands. However, with it did go a lot of the clumsy T&A… aside from the dirty King Game at least. There weren’t any characters randomly flashing their panties or trying to steal them either. I still feel like I need Cliff’s Notes to even keep track of all these characters though, and that’s after having a couple people give me a brief rundown of the game this is based on.

I guess this is looking like what I’ll stick with for Sunday mornings since I’m allergic to melodrama and Lotte’s first episode was slightly horrible. I can’t say that I like all of this show, but it certainly does have an interesting presentation style which makes it easy to write about. Aside from forgetting who the hell all these characters are each week at any rate.

FYI, I may be a little late covering Bridge to the etc tonight. I have a hot dinner date with an older couple my parents.

Preview:

Apparently a whole lot of Hayato.