天下制覇

Well, can't accuse this episode of copying a previous one.

I'm out tomorrow morning for some social event stuff, so Symphogear and Fate/Apoc posts will be a few hours later than usual.

Impressions:

This was artsy to a fault. Not just the… French CGI (??) art and animation style, but also being nigh incomprehensible on every front. Not exactly a new thing for this show, but this episode took it to a whole new level and seems completely out of whack with everything that this show's done so far. I have a hard time even parsing it out. Three kids were friends, one a prince. He made a promise to make his kingdom always sunny to the girl, which somehow involved executing hundreds of people, including the other friend. He then became a dream robot who had forgotten about that, while she became a revenge-witch dropping an orbital weapon on his kingdom. This was the dream of a girl in a coma who was listening to a radio story about the Tin Man in Wizard of Oz (the book version, not the movie one). I don't feel like I followed.

I will say that it was noteworthy as a piece of somewhat impenetrable art, if nothing else. It was certainly aspiring high. Whatever it was trying to get across didn't connect with me at least though, nor am I particularly sure what the takeaway was supposed to be. Don't engage in mass executions? Don't (reluctantly) murder your friends? The opportunity for a real twist there was sorely missed by spending waaaaaay too damn much time on the stupid cat and childhood friendship and not enough on the actual "making the kingdom" sunny or whatever. There's fertile ground there for "doing good things" while whitewashing atrocities, especially in the childish style. There were also some pretty jarring incongreguities with the style and content. The first time someone got creamed by a car, I thought for a moment it was supposed to be comical. To be fair, it kind of was. But the show and I were definitely not on the same page.