天下制覇

Oh boy, a giant mechanical spider.

Impressions:

How fitting that Captain Useless's role in the final episode and big 'boss' fight is to stand there. Way to go, destined godling of yore. You've sure proven how you are integral to this story and could not be replaced by a four foot tall wheel of manchego. There was also something kind of bizarre the whole way through how it seemed really reluctant to focus on the main characters. I don't blame them for that, but there was an odd amount of especially pointless exposition delivered straightfaced and bereft of humor, along with yelling from the peanut gallery this week. Certainly not as bad as most other shows, but it's a stumbling block that this show normally does a better job of avoided.

Again, I have to wonder why the episode where he died and had his Friendship Is Magic© epiphany before coming back to go skipping off to have more non-adventures wasn't the finale and this was. They had to reach into someone's anus all the way to the elbow to pull out the Friendship crap for this one. Didn't even fully commit to it either, as one of the harem was just off touching herself or something. Darkness's almost nonsequitur bit at the start before she all but disappeared from the episode reeked of them trying to figure out some way to work her in out of a sense of nothing but obligation.

Final Thoughts:

Well, it ended with an announcement of another season, although I'm not entirely sure why. Aside from the obvious squeezing a few more drops of blood from the stone. Each character only has 1-2 jokes at most, and boy, does it run them into the ground. It seemed to understand the basics of keeping things episode, each episode having a start, middle, and end that it would progress through, and for most of the characters to generally get their comeuppance for being petty or stupid, but when it came time to leverage those into actual content in whatever form, jokes, story, development, etc, all it ever did with that was rehash the same few things over and over and over and over again. Aqua is a prole. Megumi is fourteen sick. Darkness is a masochist. Also, the budget problems. Most notably in that godawful fanservice episode second from the end, but it was never a great looking show to begin with.

There are a few chuckles to be had here and there, more at the start when things are new(er). It could have developed the interactions between the characters more, developed the characters themselves more, or even developed the story more, but it's disinterested in doing any of that and ends up a pretty superficial affair… an unfortunate running theme this season. It's just a cast of one-note characters that hang around long past their welcome. Even one episode centered on them is pushing it. While it never sinks into truly obnoxious angst or melodrama, it doesn't even strive to hit any high points on the comedy or adventuring either. I'm not particularly looking forward to it whenever it returns. I sincerely doubt it has anything more to offer that I haven't already seen.