天下制覇

Again, I feel like nobody in Japanese media writing has ever actually played an RPG.

Impressions:

Not as obnoxious with all the exposition or the characters being petty dicks to each other as the first episode, but I can't say that I particularly liked the new character much. They went all in on what the cool kids are calling "fourteen sick" with her, and it's just obnoxious. Worse, given the reactions of the characters, they obviously know that she's obnoxious, but went ahead with being annoying anyway. There are plenty of ways to parody that kind of thing, or at the very least, put some kind of twist on it, but they decided to just play it completely straight and have the characters stare at her to show that what they just went through was in fact a joke. At least they didn't scream the declaration that a joke had been made.

Not to say that all the exposition was totally gone, especially when it came to idiotic mage girl talking about herself, although I really couldn't tell you what the point of the completely humorless info dump about giant frogs at the start was all about either. There were real opportunities for comical sob stories about her motivations or limitiations or such, but they all went for naught, opting instead to just shout and have the joke be that Aqua was convinced. The episode was probably at its best when it was being deadpan and/or abusing the girls though, mostly through being eaten by frogs, both things that the newbie was anything but.

Next Episode:

Harem reaches full.