天下制覇

All the closeups on the little ribbons kept me from taking him seriously.

Impressions:

Another good episode. Unlike Dog Days, Horizon does have enough flash to carry itself on style over substance for at least a while. The battles at this point do feel a little bit arbitrary since pretty much all the main conflicts between actual characters have been resolved and now we’re just in "fighting for fighting’s sake" mode with the no real import attached to anything. This was particularly self-evident towards the end of the first third with Toori’s speech and a bunch of random grunts on both sides doing all manner of silly things. I think there’s enough going on with other characters that we shouldn’t need to bother with Fred, Bob, and Hanz. Also, wasn’t there at least one squad of guys in togas in Musashi’s army?

Anywho though, entertaining, certainly, just a litle obviously arbitrary too. There doesn’t need to be much substance, but they’re actively working against themselves when they try to mix bad slapstick in between the more serious fights. There’s a time and place for curry gags. Actually, I’m not certain there is. But proximal to the bloodied girls and the family members that feed their mecha, is probably not it. It at least would’ve worked better with the more silly first half insead of sticking out like a sore thumb in the second. Gin and Futayo’s bits could’ve probably stood to have been a little more consistent too, but at least there was an entire episode between them to help forget that it began with sex jokes.