天下制覇

Why can’t the bubbly dragon be the last boss?

Just to note it somewhere so I can say that I can, Touhou Sky Arena’s Kurenai expansion got a metric kerfluffle of new characters added at some point.

Impressions:

Weren’t there assassins? They were never actually defeated or driven away really. The budget also seemed to get kicked up a notch or two whenever they were hanging around. So why are we fighting ANCIENT DRAGON? This damned thing literally crawled out of a volcano and is just running amok because.. dragon! It also appears to be the remaining focus of the show after shattering Derf and swallowing good ol’ Popey whole. I can’t even remember what point he ever served, if any. A vehicle for exposition? An excuse to dress Louise up like Index? Regardless of what it was, Vegas already has 8 to 1 odds on Derf being reforged, (2 to 1 that it’ll be as a chastity belt), and the pope emerging from the dragon’s guts as some kind of Super Pope to fly off on a rainbow to battle the Ultra Devil before this is all over.

At least Louise was uncharacteristically direct when it came to revealing that Saito will magically die of magic if he starts messing around with his powers, even if it did take 2/3rds of the episode and a boatload of standing around and taking to get there. Well, it also sent Tifa running off in a crying fit of angst, but then she wandered back anyway a minute later seemingly none for the worse so… uh… hooray writing! But Saito’s going to go anyway, because he’s totally oh so manly and a hero (in case you missed the dramatic music building through that whole bit) and isn’t about to let the magical power of magical contrivance magically kill him. Also, he’s already died at least once before, so I don’t think magical death by magic is much of a magic threat to magic anybody.

Preview:

Requiem for characters we didn’t care about.