天下制覇

Not to mention the number of awful distance shots total.

Impressions:

I really think the budget ran out here. The show’s rarely visually impressive, but it’s usually not this bloody cheap either. It probably didn’t help that I feel like I’ve seen this episode multiple times before. Maybe in Hidamari, maybe not. Just another generic New Years thing, complete with a tour of side characters that they conveniently run into. I guess it’s better than if they revived any of the graduation melodramatic nonsense it teased earlier in the season, but they could have still at least tried to go out on something a little less bloody generic.

Final Thoughts:

What can I say? There were, uh… a lot of baths. I honestly don’t really know if all the stretching for time and general nothingness was worse this season of if I’ve just taken as much as I can from the series. Good god, I feel like there was an entire twenty minutes of just Yuno waking up and taking a bath, to say nothing of the obligatory serial greetings to and from every person whenever someone stepped on screen. Maybe more. Or their new ‘slow zoom out to show the panel it came from’ thang. Eats up time and reinforces the already obvious ‘joke’ without adding anything, especially not effort. What joy!

I’d like to think that it’s a combination of both with a healthy dollop of continuing to involve the terrible Nori and Nazuna in things and an extra serving of a couple angsty episodes of Hiro and Sae moping around feeling sorry for themselves before spontaneously coming out of it with everything forgotten forever. I guess that’s better than dwelling on it, but neither should have existed in the first place. The episodes. Well, I wouldn’t cry if Sae never existed.

Anyway, I’d call it the weakest season by a healthy margin, but like I said, I don’t know if that’s me just getting completely sick of the never-changing formula and how much is the show actually getting worse. I suppose it really doesn’t matter though, does it? Hopefully the series can rest in peace.