天下制覇

At least it’s less creepy than some other idol dancing I’ve seen this season.

Impressions:

I think the last season of melodrama has over-primed me. Someone at Sunrise certainly has a grasp of the ironic, thankfully. Unfortunately, a lot of that did trail off pretty quickly. I would have much preferred if they kept the overdramatism and exuberance of the start into what it eventually settled into. Not that it was gone completely, but Honoka as a character pretty much needs another character to bounce off of and/or assault, or at least unsettling random bystanders, rather than moping around by herself or learning the amazement of idoldom. The show simply works much better silly than serious, unsurprisingly enough. It started out in the former, but the line got a little blurry, especially in the middle.

Surise did mostly a great job with the technical side here, especially the music. Except for the OP for some bizarre reason. All the rotoscoped dancing could be coloring that though. It certainly looks a lot better than most, but still falls into that creepy uncanny valley of animation. Especially during the pseudo-ED. *shudder* Anywho, I have no idea who Emi Nitta is (apparently one of Horizon’s lesbians), but she’s got a nice set of pipes on her, as does the piano girl. Now just get them away from the J-Pop and fighting aliens with music or something.

So color me pleasantly surprised. "Surprised" still being the operative word since I went in expecting to mostly nap through it. It still wasn’t the most exciting thing in the world and the middle did drag pretty hard, but Sunrise nailed the music in a music show, so kudos to them for at least that. More than I can say for certain other idol based shows. Like… almost all of them. I doubt it’ll win anybody over who isn’t a fan of "cute girls singing and doing silly things," but if that’s what you’re looking for, this episode hits that pretty admirably.