天下制覇

Grenades count as CQC now?

Impressions:

Definitely not as good as the first episode. For starters, the whole Cthuga/Cthuko joke was shown about… I don’t know… 30 seconds into the OP of the first episode so all the futzing around they did pretending that any of that was serious was just mystifying. Nyarlko supposedly saying goodbye and farewell forever at the end… of episode 2… also gave me that oh so warm feeling from my eyes rolling back far enough in my head to check out the front of my brain. Plus, the joke at the end about Mahiro really being wanted to be the star of some gay love drama reeked of being tacked on at the last second and could’ve done with a whole lot better setup or related jokes along the way to make it at least seem much less hamhanded.

It was still okay with chuckles here and there though, but too much of it was spent trying to play serious for characters that we already either knew were jokes or were just going to end with a limp punchline anyway. Nyarlko’s "serious mode" being just a Saint Seiya/Kamen Rider knockoff suit was a bit disappointing too. There were so many ways they could’ve gone with that other than playing it practically straight. A blushing mass of tentacles saving Mahiro for example, some kind of mass-crowbar affair, or even just a ‘cuteness’ powerup ala Zombiessu that added an extra ribbon. At least overplay it if you’re going to go completely straight. Do more of those terrible pans and cuts so it at least seems like it’s on purpose instead of practically indistinguishable from the exact scenes you were probably trying to parody.

Preview:

Swimsuit episode alread.