天下制覇

Oh, I guess this is where they went after Chain Chronicle ended.

Impressions:

You know, guys. Instead of abruptly dropping the sacrifice thing last week so you had to recap it this week, perhaps you could've just kept it all in a single episode. This one does make a pretty solid argument that it was originally one episode that got too big for its britches, so they ended up with 10 minutes of unrelated nonsense last week, and about five minutes of unrelated nonsense this week instead of just editing things down 5 minutes. The group hug was especially eye-rollingly sappy and dumb, again relying on them simply saying Akko's been trying really hard and is a true friend to all peoples and beings. Meanwhile, she's still being a surly bitch to Diana, so obviously hasn't learned anything.

Still, it's certainly the least godawful Akko as a character's been in a very long time, and the whole bit with the ghost is the most animated the show's been in a long time as well, so that already makes it the strongest episode in probably the last two months by a large margin. All the core problems remain though. The world twists inward upon itself so that Akko's screwups only make things better. She still could barely use that one metamorph spell, but it's okay, because everybody loves her for screwing it up. Not enough to actually animate the laughing though, just shake those stilsl, nobody can tell the difference. And Chariot's there to deliver the important message of "attack the giant glowing weak spot" she's immediately dumped in front of through no agency of her own, whereupon she again proves herself as the very bestest thanks to the super staff bestowed upon her by providence. So still not a personal triumph due to anything she did or anything about her, just glory handed to her on a silver platter while all Diana can do is sit on the sideline, shocked at her inadequacy compared to… that. It's hard to tell who's being built up to be the supervillain here.