天下制覇

Because subtlety is a fool's errand, apparently.

Impressions:

Strongest episode to date, mostly because I can list a plural of things that happen in it. A plural. Massacre of the randos, fighting back, setup of ideological differences in dealing with the threat and factions thereof, and introduction to a couple proper antagonists with direct connections to the obligatory mystery waif. Not that each bit wasn't without its flaws. The randos and fighting back was only somewhat more animated than this show has been thus far, the pacifist side is plainly suicidally naive in the face of an army of literal Hitler clowns, and the antagonists are literally insane cackling Hitler clowns. All things that work less the more time you spend prattling on about them. And if there's anything this show loves to do, it's prattle. It still takes about three times as long to do anything with five times as much exposition as is needed at any point, but baby steps.

Its greatest sins are how it rendered the vast majority of the focus on various randos in the first couple episodes null and void by unceremoniously offing them, mostly offscreen at that. We definitely needed all those little vignettes to know that… they're regular people? They have more or less regular lives? The goo is the goo? It also helped that it got out of the main character's head for most of the episode, so we weren't subjected to his insipid stream of consciousness. If the whole thing just shifted to focus exclusively on the one dude fighting back, I can't see how basically everything in this show wouldn't be drastically improved.

Next Episode:

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