天下制覇

At least it wasn't CGI.

Impressions:

I don't even like actual figure skating, but luckily, you could've replaced that with just about any noun and the episode wouldn't have been much impacted, and isn't that how it pretty much always goes with these sports shows? Granted, they actually animated the competitive team hang gliding instead of resorting to uncanny valley CGI, so that's a pretty huge point in its favor for not dicking up its signature thing, but at the same time, they love to draw not just the protagonist, but pretty much everyone as frumpy, blobbish cartoons while going on and on about how he's totes a fatty. Then, when he takes off his jacket and stops being the sad sack of angst that he was for the other 90% of the episode to reveal a chiseled adonis of inline hopscotch, it's jarring at best. The changing of styles is almost a clear delineation between filler time and the part of the show that somebody high up actually wanted to make, complete with naked toned man-ass at the end.

But let's harp on the filler time some more since that was the vast majority of the episode. Our sad sack protagonist shuffles his feet and goes "aw shucks" while being henpecked by the rest of the world, carried by how moved he was by the glory of balsa wood bridge building from his youth. There's also how everyone keeps unhinging their jaws which makes them all look like they escaped from a 70s gag comedy. Mostly, it's that it was so boringly by the numbers and drawn out, trying (and accomplishing) nothing above and beyond making sure that the summary of the first episode is the same as the marketing blurb they put up about the series months ago. Nothing beyond that for the characters. Nothing beyond that for humor or story. A couple minutes of actually animated dressage and that's a wrap.

Next Episode:

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