天下制覇

Serious business!

Impressions:

Well… it’s a Takashi episode. Thankfully, it’s much better than the previous one although he still remains the weakest member of the very extensive cast. Still, one of the things I’ve enjoyed most about the show is its humor and this episode had little of it after the cold open, unless you count a very dumb little "sister moe" thing with people floating in the air and a little humor unwisely interjected into the climax of the episode. It was still a nice scene, but Garuda popping in to cackle then immediately get punched back down was fairly distracting in tone. I also rolled my eyes and shook my fist when they felt the need to use the title in the show during the climax as well. Granted though, I did chuckle when Asuka blew into the Wing Quest cartridge.

Thankfully though, it did cover a lot of ground on the plot front for him. The first half of the episode wasn’t great… just showing that his other lives in the city are getting too famous for him to keep living in ignorance I guess, but we really didn’t need to full montage treatment. I did, however, really like the imagery when Asuka was talking about Asumu once they got down to business. It was interesting to see the events in Gretagard (Asuka’s ‘betrayal’ and wish to destroy it) reflect real life and I think that would have been something that would have been a lot more interesting if we had seen the whole time instead of only introduced just now. I assume the source probably does a better job of that. I’d be interested to see what exactly Asuka and ‘Hawk’ summoning a Love Meteor is supposed to represent, if anything at all.

Brief Summary:

After a day filled with his other lives bleeding into his, Asuka takes Takashi to her home and confronts him about Gretagard. She tries to make him choose to stay in this world by telling him how wonderful it is, but he tells her that he pities the people there and wants to help them. She reveals that Gretagard is from an SNES game and isn’t real. He has another breakdown and appears in Gretagard where Princess Asuka is trying to destroy it. Real Asuka starts pounding on his other personalities while Princess Asuka fights him until they ‘both’ beat him into submission and he comes back to reality.

Preview:

Kobato, Kobato, Kobato.