天下制覇

D, pump the lyrical.

It wasn’t until after last week that I noticed the official romanization shorthand for the show/game is OreTuba. Also, I gave Lotte ten more minutes to do anything vaguely interesting or amusing, but apparently that’s too much to ask. Also, should I decide to subject myself to more Bridge tonight, it’ll be late due to dinner plans.

Impressions:

I feel a little dirty even saying it, but this was a very Shaft-ish episode. The budget saving was palpable, especially during the start of Hayato’s segment when they spent almost the entire time on shots from behind people’s heads, shots of walking legs, smash cuts to text, etc. Shuusuke’s side really didn’t progress much. Hiyoko dumped her behemoth of a book on him and the fire particularly solid connection between him and Takashi was shown, but otherwise that’s about it. 

Hayato’s side took up most of it, but thankfully was a few steps up from his segment in the last couple episodes. Naru’s still a little too transparently cute for cuteness’s sake for my tastes, even with sniffing sweaty helmets. She also doesn’t seem to fit in all that well with gang-mediator Hayato all that well, making her attraction to him feel very artificial. Speaking of that, the East-West gang wars between people with "Flame Birdie" shirts and goths was a mite silly, especially when it suddenly leapt from throwing fire crackers at each other’s feet to pulling a gun and then others shrugging off bullet wounds like it’s nothing. It was a little better than Hayato’s usual one-sided conversations I suppose. Well, and I couldn’t help but laugh every time the drum-machine started up and LR-2001 very badly rapped.

Preview:

Yet more Hayato.