天下制覇

That's one awesome and useful sketch for some last second exposition.

Semi-Impressions:

The only way I could've really considered this episode salvagable is if it was 15+ minutes of balls to the wall action to make up for all the blathering through the rest of this season. Of course, it wasn't. Hell, they ran out of the animation budget at the end of the miniboss fight and the 'finishing blow' was delivered at about 5 seconds of 2 FPS awesomeness. As for the last boss, they flared their auras for a while, thought about their friends, the big sword fell, and then he had lost. Didn't even bother trying to make that look like a fight. I think they also only just now realized that they were about to have a climax centered around characters who had done nothing but deliver some exposition, so had to crowbar something in for them, before trying to pull a bittersweet friends 4eva ending.

Anyway, it was the ugly mess that we all expected. Franchise be dead now please.

Final Thoughts:

Terrible sequel to a show that had nothing but occasionally visual style to begin with. Far less action, far more talking, characters existed solely to deliver exposition, and the central conflict was all high concept metaphysical magical nonsense that never got anchored to actual characters or events. Hell, there was a random timeskip in the middle of things where everyone apparently spent months simply sitting around. That sums up the entire show. While there are the occasional bits of action (or bits of ridiculous-looking T&A) and style, it's never used effectively or to further anything. Plus, the goddamned fog. And the shutters. I should've stuck with the bland-as-hell extra teenagery Garo instead.