天下制覇

Can’t anybody throw a normal punch?

Impressions:

Some good, lots of horrible in this ending. For starters, it had at least three or four chest stabbings, but at this point, I think the show has inured me against them. It was also a lot more action packed than most episodes, although still nowhere near the first one. I liked what they seemed to be heading for with the open ending of whether or not Kouga shot Jin too… but then they had to go and flashback to it and ruin that by showing that Kouga did try to kill him, and it was only that which sent Jin into the monster rage. They really should’ve had those things the other way around if they wanted them to make sense. Have Jin lose control due to his dead girlfriend and then Kouga would’ve had a good reason to go all crazy-face. This way doesn’t make much sense, least of all as a flashback.

And then there’s ol’ Whose-His-Face. He just stood there and let himself get arm-stabbed a few times without even noticing it. Then he got stabbed again by Kouga’s sword and continued to completely ignore it… right up until he suddenly collapsed to his supposed death. Uh. Okay? Maybe we should’ve been dodging. Or at least throwing more laser rings. It certainly couldn’t have hurt. And then everybody apparently just goes back to their normal lives and/or hunting random monsters in alleys with two more chest stabbings to finish things off. The end.

Final thoughts below.

Final Thoughts:

I’m running out of ways to say "mediocre and ultimately forgettable show" for this season. It once again started off decently, albeit packed from top to bottom with terrible cliches, but it was gritty, stylish, and blitzed right along. That did not last long though and everything took a huge hit, most of all the budget. The cardboard cutout characters also get really boring really fast when everything slows down and lets you get forces you to take a good look at them. Kouga spent practically the entire show being an annoying child while Jin just glared at things and killed monsters. There’s a reason that popcorn movies are filled with explosions, to distract you from the obvious flaws elsewhere. Shining a flashlight on them instead is not an effective way to go about it.

Every third or fourth episode or so, it came together enough to be okay. Mostly when the violence kicked up, but it was still too slow paced, too focused on poorly developed characters, and too full of lazy unneeded exposition to be able to build up effectively and/or carry any momentum. The best I can say is that it stayed more focused on the action and wasn’t as lousy with drawn-out exposition as a lot of these kinds of shows are. That’s still miles away from where it should be though and I imagine this one is destined to just gather dust on the shelves.