天下制覇

You’re a bum.

Impressions:

On one hand, Fuyumi played less of a part in the episode than either of the last two, just hanging around for some eye candy and vomiting. On the other hand, it was a pretty drastic slowdown from the last couple episodes. Perhaps appropriately, but it did feel a little weird going from primarily half-episode structures to something twice as long, especially for just a very generic rival character. I kind of wonder if they didn’t try to make it half Wolf and half the adventures of Staz’s doppelganger and partway figured out that they only had about two minutes of content for one and interspersed it as asides instead of a full-fledged section while stretching out Wolf’s stuff. I think I preferred the doppelganger parts too.

Anyway, I guess the second half was supposed to be Ippo, although I don’t think Japan can do any animated boxing without looking like Ippo… Aaand from everything I’ve seen about Ippo, it wishes it had this kind of budget. Not that I was impressed by it. Lord no, but at least it wasn’t embarrassingly full of loops and stills. They still stopped in the middle to have an impromptu lecture that I have a hard time thinking was any manner parody. The second half was just a little off all around. At best, the kind of parody that does the exact same thing as the things it’s ‘parodying,’ but says "this is a cliche," which I think kind of misses the point. At worst, well, it spent a lot of time trying to play off a werewolf and vampire boxing uncomfortably straight, which just seems like someone missed a memo somewhere. 

Next Episode:

Brother complex.