天下制覇

   

The three pillars of comedy.

Impressions:

Is it really a thing that Japanese people list off the zodiac starting from a specific animal and stop at a specific one? What’s more, is it really so much of a thing that this joke would need to be repeated? After that, puns. That’s not a great start to things. This falls firmly into the same camp of shows like Nyarlko and KKN, a spastic screaming magical girlfriend pops up and then they recite cliches at each other, because of course, explaining cliches is the greatest joke of all. “You seem like an exposition character.” Ha ha ha. It’s a timeless classic. “I’m reporting you to the police.” Ha ha ha ha ha. Another timeless classic. Even moreso after the fifteenth time he says it. Absurdist in that Japanese sense where it does a ridiculous cliche, elicits a deadpan reaction, then announces how surprised it is about a deadpan reaction to a ridiculous cliche, and finally, pats itself on the back for three fantastic jokes well told. I guess at least it’s fairly consistent with its energy instead of simply blasting a splash background on the screen with an air horn every 20 seconds. Well, I mean, it does that too, but it’s kind of loud and obnoxious even without them, so it’s not as jarring as certain other things that punctuate sentences by sudden assaults on the eyes and ears as way of a ‘joke.’

Instead of being distracted by sentimentality or the like though, it sort of takes the Show By Rock approach and shoves them into the CGI dimension where they have punchies for a short while. Granted, they avoid the major pitfalls of CGI, not haphazardly tossing it against some other style and employing it for more than panning over a vehicle, building, or creepy robot people walking. It’d still be about eight thousand times better if they just bothered to animate it normally in the same style as the rest of the show, but I consider that an improvement over trying to manhandle my heart strings. Still, there’s something a bit weird about it, probably the freakish faces, and with it constantly screaming about how it’s totally in the know about all your cliches, man, it doesn’t have the same drug-fueled we’re-doing-whatever-the-hell-we-want-yeah-that’s-right-that-egg-just-got-off-to-being-whipped feel. This is more of a sugar high than an LSD trip. With an 8 year old who keeps pointing out all the jokes.

Next Episode:

Loud noises.