天下制覇

Meanwhile, anywhere but the magic turtle.

Impressions:

Boy, getting stabbed really isn't the inconvenience that it used to be, now is it? The bigger inconvenience to the episode were all the cutaways to the past, irrelevant things back with the students, the past again, and some more of the past. That successfully managed to both draw things out painfully long, and then force them to rush through the 'big' final moment. I would say that it takes a special skill to both draw nothing out and then force yourself to rush over the important bits in a single episode, but that seems to be a talent shared by a lot of people in Japanese media.

Anyway, once again, another kidnapping resolved primarily by rambling aimlessly, capped off by 'surprise' using his special thingy. I appreciate how almost the moment Whose-Its showed up to yell at Whoever, Dead Guy decided to short circuit any kind of chance for some flavor of dramatic moment by whipping out a bunch of clones. Where does Japan keep finding all these lunatics anyway? Granted, preferable to all the flashbacks that infected this episode like a creeping plague, but like the giant turtle it also vomited up out of nowhere, unceremoniously dispatched because we've got a three episode format to adhere to, it's 19 minutes into the episode, and the Kidnappee is still kidnapped. How many antagonists exactly are we going to have stand around motionlessly and rant for the climaxes of this show's arcs? Are we really going to go four for four here? Smart money probably says yes.