天下制覇

  

Snuggle time.

Impressions:

The animation budget recovered somewhat after the last few weeks of embarrassing itself, but the pacing sure as hell did not. Five minutes into the episode and Yuu’s still screaming in shock over his long lost BFF, and all the action was plagued by the original sin of stopping every five seconds to show characters gasping, standing rock still to taunt people in ‘surprise’ attacks that require a two sentence setup, and the not-as-original triplet sins of “everybody else simply stands around, staring at Romeo and Juliet breathlessly gasping each other’s names,” “I have no idea what constitutes a wound at this point,” and “everybody lost to what has always been cannon fodder offscreen.” I think my favorite terrible moment may have been when Yuu gave in to the power of darkness, and instead of, say, grisly massacring a vampire or something, he charges at one and then… attacks the ground, creating a giant pillar of light with a halo. Yes, dear audience. Gaze upon true, horrifying darkness, striking mercilessly at the dirt. Jackass didn’t even scratch the vampire he was attacking. I don’t think he even killed one of them before he had to get his obligatory hug to come back to his senses. Get a new cliche, Japan.

So we can call it a step up from its recent escapades, but only maybe back to where it was a month or two ago; a cliche ridden mess of non-characters prattling on in between the occasional moments of decent action and occasional moments of ridiculous backflips, with uncomfortable moments of two boys innocently staring into each other’s eyes, telling each other how much they care. The writing would make a college freshman weep, but at least it was ridiculously imbecilic this week instead of not present at all. I mean, Christ, the day was saved not by Captain Attacks Dirt, but because there was an entire army of reinforcements waiting just off screen, led by a man that shoots tigers from a sniper rifle. I don’t even know what I should say beyond that. It’s like a Far Cry mod gone horribly wrong. 

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