天下制覇

  

Couldn’t they have at least thumb wrestled?

Chaika’s probably going to be a little bit delayed this afternoon. Aroduc Stuff to do after work.

Impressions:

Wasn’t the whole thing about the beast people that they have telepathy, massively heightened senses, and cheat out the ass? So of course, the game would end by the completely incompetent character being carried up behind one of them to shoot her in the back of the head. What a tremendously awful way to cap off what was a relatively strong episode last week. And then they do their obligatory godawful “You had fun!” to which everybody cheers, including the stadium of beastpeople for some reason, and go take a bath before doubling down on “awful ending” with a coin toss.

But at least they managed to cram another pair of tits in at the very last second to just sit there and lecture at them before too falling prey to Sibling Wonderment. And to give you an idea of just how moronic that got, with the dramatic slow mo and pausing to have exposition time, it took an entire minute just to flip the coin, not even including explaining coin flips. And then they flashed back to it.     

 

Final Thoughts:

A stronger finish than how most of the show went, but the writing left a hell of a lot to be desired on a lot of levels. There’s the shouty, repetitive gags, the infallibility of the main characters in all aspects including sheer random chance, every single thing ending with everybody in wonder and newfound joy of the siblings’ greatness, and that the games, the meat of the show, were just too infrequent. Then again, most did end extremely unsatisfactorally, so maybe that’s actually a mixed blessing. Still it was 3-4 episodes between an important game (ie something actually happening) each time and that’s more than a little absurd when it doesn’t have anything to fall back on but exposition, exposition, and more exposition. And baths and shouting, I guess.

Which isn’t to say that it’s all bad. Production stayed relatively strong throughout and while they could certainly stand to lean back on the bloom… a lot, the visual direction does help the whole magical world deal even while they’re taking their damned sixth bath of the show. There was potential both the shiritori and battle chess too, but the former was simply too absurdly dragged out and the latter too obviously won simply because they are the main characters. We all know that the main characters are going to win. It’s the writers’ job to help us forget that in the moment by putting their backs up against the wall. Or I guess if the point is to show their overwhelming greatness, to be confident in the face of adversity. Either way can work, but they tried to do both; all gasping, dramatic shots, and carrying on about how doomed they were before revealing themselves to be the greatest actors of all time, even against mind readers, and the whole thing was according to their master plan. Or I guess you could also have actual character arcs and development, but that’s probably too ambitious for a light novel adaptation.

I guess I’d put it a bit above average, largely on the coattails of the eleventh episode, but there’s too many episodes that were just pointless and the characters nowhere near strong or entertaining enough for me to really ever get into it, especially when they would pause for 5% of the episode to watch bloody coins flip.