天下制覇

Why must you say such hurtful things about Sheena, Zelos?.

So, uh… apparently this was released a month ago while I was busy with final projects and whatnot and just kind of overlooked it. Well, at least the entire blogosphere missed it too, as did all the subbers, so… avaunt!

Impressions:

Unfortunately though, I didn’t really miss too much. This was completely a setup episode for the final trek up to Derris Kharlan covering all of the half-elf stuff shoehorning in all the half-elf stuff. Not that it’s any better written in the game though. "You thought we were one kind of demihuman, but actually… we’re slightly different!" And then there’s Sithlord Mithos. "He’s a human, you know. You can never really trust him. Now let me smell you. Mmmm… Little boys." Cutting out all the stuff with the elves themselves just makes it all the more obtrusive how the obligatory Tales racism plot was tacked on in the eleventh hour.

At least the music remained as excellent as it always has been through the series, even if the very last shot of Martel’s frozen body was a little too far over the top. I liked some of the direction choices with the flashbacks too, actually showing Martel’s death and the bleeding of images/speeches between pre-crazy Mithos and Lloyd along with Colette and Martel. Mithos looked sufficiently deranged as he was throttling/sparklying Pronyma. Although I would have liked at least a little more menace out of him against the actual party besides a barrier, tossing Regal aside, and then timestop. Let’s get some real last bossery going on here, especially if we’re going to apparently skip Lloyd and Kratos finally having it out for the super magical sword.

So it certainly was not one of the better episodes for the OVA, but it’s had worse episodes too. Hopefully they were just saving things up for the big finale in like… August, but I should know by now that that’s never the case. Zelos still has a wealth of flashbacks he can spew out after all.