天下制覇

What is it with this show and casual dismemberment?

Not that I’m complaining, mind you.

Impressions:

Another strong episode for the show, although they still need to pull the drama back at least a couple notches. Well, and give Haruaki a little more of a personality. At least he’s not irritating, but he’s just kind of a walking moral speech tape recorder. It looks like the budget began to run out towards the end too. The fight was great for about 60 seconds, but then quickly devolved into mostly stills and shots of eyeballs, but at least eyeballs of people involved in the fight. The brief flurry of Fear vs Konoha in the middle to teach her a lesson was merely okay. I also have absolutely no idea what that smash cut to Kirika checking her hair in the middle of the fight for about three seconds was all about. That was just bizarre and even more clumsy and jarring than anything F-Zero did today. Well, the jarring part because it happened right in the middle of the fight instead of characters just staring at each other. A rare misstep for the direction here. Otherwise, cohesion and focus. Hoo-bloody-ray.

Speaking of Kirika, it’s no huge surprise that she’s got a darker side with all of this too, but it is welcome. I’ve never really liked the character archetype that was supposed to be the anchor to normalcy. I doubt that Mummy Girl is actually dead either, particularly after seeing how she looks practically stitched together to begin with and apparently losing an arm to Fear. I wouldn’t be surprised if that turned out to be Kirika or some ability of hers either though, particularly with the lead-in. They went suspiciously out of their way to keep that as just a shadow although it did remember to pick up and take its severed arm with it. How consciencious of her.