天下制覇

Aside from hitting it.

Impressions:

It’s kind of fitting that Dr. Evil nearly breaks his neck falling down the stairs in terror in the opening minute of the episode. But at least he pressed a button and didn’t otherwise even bother resist arrest. Antagonists! I had hoped for better from whatever the inevitable ass-pull last boss would be though. Or some semblance of any choreography. Or at least something above and beyond floating in a bubble singing before everyone transformed into their ultimate glowing wing forms… which was the gateway for at least one to transform into her extra ultimate form. Ye lords.

The thingy didn’t even really do much of anything. It stood still and shot some missiles and a fireball before being ultimate destroyed, and then against their super ultimate forms, it… uh… roped Maria? And was large and in the way? Twice? Well gee. If it was just once, it wouldn’t have been a very dangerous last boss. But the power of holding hands Vitalization saved the day. I think having Miku run out and be the one to finish things was really just adding insult to injury, although it could also have been someone on the staff mistakenly thinking that the muggles forming a human pyramid to press a button was a touch of the triumph of normal people that this season lacked.

Final Thoughts:

Spectacular start to the series, but after that, it got increasingly frustrating. Which isn’t to say that it wasn’t easily the most enjoyable show of the season for me. It did a good job keeping the action constant and well-budgeted, as well as continuing to merge the music effectively into the fighting and make the most of its setting/gimmick. It did suffer quite a bit from most of the middle/later going being against the helpless punching bags of the Noise, which haven’t been a threat to any of the protagonists since about episode 3 of the first season. I really have no idea why they hold back the antagonists for more fights against the Noise, to say nothing of introducing new special Noise and then never saying anything about them ever again.

Which brings us to the writing in general. It was a much bigger mess than the first season, and that was a season where the main antagonist was in some kind of love/hate relationship with the moon. The characters just failed to interact with each other in meaningful ways through the majority of the show, especially when it came to between the protagonists and antagonists. After their initial introduction, the new magical girls, Maria especially, became some kind of sacred cow to the writers and were forced to sit on the sidelines for practically the entire rest of the show while a character who was half a joke from the start tried to fill in the role of main antagonist. In the first season, while many of the finer details were nonsensical white noise better off ignored, it was always obvious who it was focused on, what was going on, and where it was going with them for each of the main three arcs. Hell, just by who the antagonists were in each arc. In this season, with all the stuff introduced and then surreptitiously dropped, ignored, or just plain reset by magic, what focus there was on the characters rarely carried any weight at all past its use as a ‘shocking’ cliffhanger.  

I think it’s still worth watching if you enjoyed the first season, but the added characters by and large went to waste, motivations and character interactions were far weaker, and the antagonist situation in general was just a mess. I wanted to see the magical girls knock heads and it gave me that right off the bat, but then it dangled them out of reach for most of the rest of the show while pissing around with a cariacature of an antagonist who was reduced to pissing himself in terror on a shockingly regular basis. Like I said, frustrating.