Noragami #12 — The Power of Low Expectations
March 23rd, 2014
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Could’ve certainly been worse.
Impressions:
Better than I was expecting at this point, but still a pretty weak ending. You can only pull the “her memories have disappeared… slightly more!” card so many times in quick succession, and since it’s the only card the show had that wasn’t the darkness within, they’re putting a lot of trust that it can carry pretty much everything. It would have worked better if they had held back a little to just her memories of them or something. At least that would have left open the possibility for a more bittersweet and less cheesy “back to the status quo” ending. All she even did anyway was have some rocks dropped on her and then regain all her memories because she smelled him.Â
But at least they put a bit more effort into the action than usual. Still not great, still using stock footage, still pretty one-sided back and forth between the various power ups, still a totally unsatisfying end to the fight, still didn’t really resolve anything with Nora who was more of an antagonist than angsty eye-boy ever was, but at least there wasn’t a five minute time out for a lecture. Thanks for lowering my expectations, show! Â
Final Thoughts:
Far too much of the show was consumed by the awful angsty Yukine arc and it never really developed any kind of antagonist. Rabou wasn’t even a good try, just some guy with a sword who wanted to kung-fu fight. The only real villain the show ever had was angst and hardly developed any kind of good excuse over it, let alone one in the here and now. I remember one of the relatively few things that I liked at the start was that it wasn’t taking itself very seriously, especially with Hiyori enjoying her newfound powers. Alas, she quickly fell right into the role of enabling mother for the angst and then damsel in distress while the show itself lost whatever scant lightness of tone it had to wallow endlessly.
I’m trying to think back over the episodes and can’t even remember how they frittered away their time. The monsters of the week were tacked on and the action largely token. Bones certainly did not have their A team working on this one. I’m not even sure I could say how the Bishamonten situation was resolved. She just suddenly stopped showing up almost as soon as she arrived. I guess she must not have cared that much after all. Even when things do ‘happen,’ it’s usually done to the tune of a straight up lecture, which probably explains why it’s so hard to connect with or care about any of them. Â
The action’s weak, the melodrama is laughable and stretched out absurdly longer than it needed to be, and the characters all around could use a slap across the chops. You can do a lot better in any category.
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