天下制覇

I honestly am not sure why I found this episode especially infuriating.

Impressions:

This is no doubt one of my pettier complaints ever leveled at a show, but holy Zeus, was her ridiculously stupid hair seriously pissing me off by the end of it. I remember rolling my eyes in previous episodes, but the way it kept jutting out into shots a foot in front of her face, and just existing at the completely impossible angle that it did kept wearing me down as all other characters were excised from the episode except for Blando and Terrible Hair.

And worse, this whole episode was nothing. Goddamned nothing. They fall into Teddybear Land, mope around while going through some exposition and flashbacks, and then, when it finally comes time to try… just to show up for the fight… she immediately wins. Handily. And everyone trundles off. The struggle was not against the barbearian king in a giant robo-bear, it was simply to show up. You cannot keep doing this, Japan. Struggle, fail, learn/grow, try again, overcome. You cannot just handwave over most of that and end up with the same narrative. And especially not by jettisoning your only strength, the animation, to faff around with some goddamned teddy bears and waving around those godawful hair.