天下制覇

How nice of the baddies to let them keep their hair accessories after stealing their underwear.

Brief note for the interested, Izumo 4's trial was posted a week or two back and I only recently got around to trying it. I really like the basic engine, so it's cleared my first hurdle. Now I have to go back at some point and be inevitably vastly disappointed by the writing… and probably the rest when it gets overcomplicated. I'll do a more thorough writeup within a week or so once I have a chance to do so. Also, I've started working on BB2 and already found brand new technical issues. If you want to help, especially with interface stuff, go here.

Impressions:

Well, at least like every arc for this show, it should wrap up next week. Especially galling is that the entire cast outside of the character who's holding up the neon sign saying "TIME FOR MY TRAGIC BACKGROUND AND NON-DEVELOPMENT DEVELOPMENT" is just along for the ride with no greater investment than something between "Huh, I'm curious about that," and "friendship power!" Most of it is spent taking a swan dive right into a giant jell-o vat of bad cliche. Cliches are cliches for a reason, but mre importantly, we're all familiar with them. You don't need to submerge yourself head deep in them and then spend 15 minutes re-explaining them. They are a means to an end, not the end itself. They are the tool with which we build, not what we are supposed to build.

So here we have probably the dullest episode yet, although that one episode that was just the two girls squabbling was pretty damn close. Just going through the standard motions of super genius experimental teenagers in an experimental facility and abusing/experimenting on experimental super children that is the standard go to for every goddamned anime. Why can't for once, we have a Doc Ock or Green Goblin origin story instead? Is that too much to ask, or has Japan just declared a ban on any antagonist motivation besides rape, exploiting/murdering children, and remaking the universe? Anyway, we it also went for cutting over the parts with the mafiosos, guns, and shootings that might've at least pretended to be interesting in order to make more time for having the girls sit around naked in their cells, freezing their nipples off because smocks weren't in the T&A budget, while the Tits 2 gets a turn at having the protagonist's dick rubbed against her. In a shocking twist, instead of it being because she went to his house, got naked, and fell on him, they went to the honeymoon sweet, she straddled him, and then got naked. Talk about a reversal of the formula. flashbacks and exposition. Lots and lots and lots and lots of exposition.