天下制覇

Shouldn’t they have fought him instead of just grunting at him?

Impressions:

Same ol’, same ol’. We had the weird melodramatic flashback shoved in out of nowhere and dismissed just as quickly, the action not quite animated enough to make it interesting, enough glow to envelope a sun, robot ninjas introduced and dismissed moments later, and I think in what may be a first not just for this show but for anime in general, the credits of the last episode finished before the final battle did. Well, ‘final battle.’ You’d think having the entire cast staring down the big bad against a fiery backdrop would have resulted in something, but no. Apparently the budget had run out by then.

Oh, and there’s the OP as an insert too since it was the last episode. At least that’s the only reason I can think of. It’s not like the battles gained meaning after their respective antagonists caught back up after being defeated. Hell, it was whipped out before they even reached the final boss and had to team up against him because he ate their leaders and sicc’ed robo-ninjas on them. Wouldn’t uh… that be where it’d be time to whip that crap out? Maybe they already had the ED earmarked for there and just needed somewhere… anywhere… to put it. The director here clearly has his own plans and I suspect they’re being whispered to him by his dog.

Final Thoughts:

It’s mainly an interesting show (and I use that term very loosely) for failing to do a lot of things extremely wrong that other shows wallow in, or doing them wrong in different ways. Of course, that’s far from actually doing things well. The melodrama is kept extremely short and isn’t dwelt on but it’s never actually weaved into the story in any meaningful way and is just spat out at literally random in flashbacks and then immediately forgotten again. The story was kept light and fluffy without devolving into an exposition-riddled mess, but toward the end it was all focused on a character too incompetent to pour water out of a boot with instructions on the heel.The fights generally weren’t ugly still-infested speedline yuck, but they never had any real meaning to them nor were ever well done enough to survive on pure flash either.

So… eh. It’s not the worst thing, especially as far as the "tits plus ripped clothes" subset of action goes, but I can’t really think of any particularly strong reason to watch it either. It’s competent enough for what it does, but it’s incredibly unambitious so I’ve already forgotten what happened for at least 75% of the show already, if anything ever happened at all. High forgettability is just about the last trait you ever want to see in a show. Let’s say it gets two sushi rolls. That’s as good a measurement as any.