天下制覇

Good thing this took place at sunset.

Impressions:

Well, the middle half wasn’t terrible. Actually, with the election results continually popping up, I liked to pretend that they were part of the show, which made that more amusing than usual too, although I really can’t give them any credit for that. It went perfectly with all the talking heads rambling aimlessly about nonsense. Punditry at its finest. On the flipside though, the action was still a lot weaker than this show had earlier in its run and a lot of it was ridiculously corny, full of dramatic stills/slowmos, elaborate (and ridiculous) spinning, and the like. Almost like they remembered that the point was to sell their mech toys again and had to jam it all in for box art. You only get away with looking cool if you actually look cool. And when you’re trying to be all dramatic with a race against time, stopping to pose for photo ops every 10 seconds is working against yourself.

There’s also the issue that even for all the bluster and dramatic intro shot, the good guys pretty much curbstomped them the whole time and had their tails pulled out of the fire by the Americans at the very first sign that any one of them might get a scratch on them… again made silly by following it up with a dramatic pose and insert song. For what, exactly, I don’t know. Even the BETA were just ablative meat for target practice. It’s one thing to be eating people’s heads and laying waste to cities. It’s another to just be charging down the streets aimlessly. That doesn’t inspire much in the way of terror. Not even when put on a map as little dots that absolutely cannot be allowed to reach this other dot.

The base terrorists also had just about the most ignomious and moronic end possible as they all just began shooting each other and themselves. Nothing really says "victory for the good guys" like all the baddies simply committing suicide at the very thought of their approach. I think they realized with 3 minutes left that they hadn’t actually done a damn thing with the Scarlet Twin plotline that they introduced in episode 3 and had to wrap up the terrorist stuff tout de suite to jam that in and make them the last boss to no doubt be defeated with the power of love Yuuya’s penis.