天下制覇

I can understand removing her top, but the bottom too?

Impressions:

I have mixed feelings about this one. Just like last week, they did a very good job with the fight, keeping it well animated and stylish, as well as showing some of Fear’s abilities without explaining each and every single bit (chip on my shoulder is back!). The direction for the rest of the episode was also excellent, something most of this season has been sorely lacking. However, and this is a big however, I really think that they muffed up two major parts of the episode that completely hamstringed it and stopped it from having much impact. First, and most obviously, it’s only episode 3. Nobody is going to buy that Fear is really going to kill herself, and this much melodrama over being a pox upon humanity after an entire episode of antics two weeks prior does mesh well.

Second, it’s a similar problem to the one that plagued LotLH, they aren’t going far enough to actually show that she’s a monster. Fear attacking Haruaki and the class rep were good step towards that, but against Haruaki wasn’t really that convincing since she didn’t do any damage and the other came after the wallowing already began… and neither were brutal or out-of-control enough to really sell all the angsting over it. She’s strong and she lost her temper when her friends were being attacked, but despite how much they try to sell the crazy, she doesn’t really go beyond that. If she had the woman at her complete mercy and then tore off her arm, fine. That would have been much better, but just slicing an arm off seconds after having her own face cut… that doesn’t work so well when you’re trying to show that she’s a berserk, evil psychopath. And of course, the completely surprise ending of Haruaki fishing her out of the water in a dive made of sparklies to tell her he accepts her yada yada yada healed by the power of proximity to a penis. You’ve heard the song and dance before.

So I don’t know what that averages out to. I couldn’t get into the melodrama coming this early and with that weak of a lead-in to it, but maybe your mileage will vary. I still hope they continue on the darker side of this more though as it makes for a far more interesting show than the honestly very generic and fairly dull harem escapades. I guess we’ll see though. I think at this point, the show’s doing enough interesting (if not always right) that I’ll see it through, but I really hope it can get all its ducks in a row. The pieces are definitely there in production, style, and creativity, it just hasn’t quite slotted them together yet.