天下制覇

  

I CANNOT DO ANYTHING FOR MYSELF BUT PROGRAM.

This is actually first broadcast on Thursdays, not Fridays as previously indicated. MBS was slow/lazy with updating. And it was a two episode initial broadcast. Episode 3 airs on the 23rd.

Impressions:

This strikes me as what you’d get if you blended up Madoka and Black Rock Shooter, or maybe just had Mari Okada do her own version of Madoka, except that one of the characters isn’t a simpering ball of insecurity. Before anybody mistakes any of that as a compliment, I’ll remind you that I detested the real world parts and characters of all of those things, and like them, this is far more insipid real world lurgy friendship nonsense than spilled-watercolor-paint world… even bloody inside spilled-watercolor-paint world… although I guess that’s par for the course as well. Throw some random other magical girl stuff into the blender for no reason as well; everybody uses cell phones ala Pretty Cure for some inexplicable reason, and they all have magical pets that don’t do anything but float there. I give even odds that they’re secretly eating souls.

It was a pretty dull episode for the most part. It didn’t need ten minutes to establish regular girls doing regular things in a club… but one’s in a wheelchair and is therefore disabled! Nor did it need to stumble around for five plus minutes with exposition for “Monsters Bad!” I made the Okada/BRS comparison due to the prominence of the wheelchair girl who was only a couple inches away from having a neon sign attached to her head proclaiming “SOURCE OF MELODRAMA.” To be fair, that was as much her sudden bout of insecurity as it was Yuuna’s “You are useless and helpless but I will protect yoooou! For frieeeeeeeeends!” schtick, which has already worn thin. The girl who will follow her sister/the mentor character everywhere and do anything for her and simply can’t function without big sister was also playing the bad melodrama megaphone pretty damn loud. It’s not subtle is the takeaway point. They could go the affirming Disney everyone really is awesome deep inside route, but that’s not the vibe I got from the episode at all.

The action was… okay, but it was at the tail end of a whole, whole lot of boring, short, mostly oddly overanimated jumping around, and as I said, tainted by the original sin of insecure teenagers menstruating their feelings power all over. To be continued/wrapped up in the back to back episode 2 which I’ll get to momentarily.