天下制覇

Would that all anime sobfests were interrupted by banging a gong.

Impressions:

Goddamn, MAPPA. Where'd the budget for this come from? I can only imagine the next month is going to be recap and talking heads. Talk about an action packed episode from start to finish. And actual action. Choreography and everything. Sure, around halfway, it became mostly CGI, and there was waaaay more spinny camera than I would've liked, but I'm about 95% certain there was more action in this one episode than there's been in the last eight episodes of every other show I've watched this season combined. Blissfully little blathering too. Even had a "Stop sniveling. Grieve later. Do things now," bit, which anime in general sorely lacks. Well, maybe not lacks, but normally self-undermines by having it take five minutes. I'm also very glad the Chinese girl survived, because that was definitely looking like she was going to self-nuke in the sewer. I like her. I like the entire idea of a horde of middle-aged Chinese restaurant workers descending on the city in moments of crisis with wacky turtle necklaces going berserk.

Where it could've been better, and mind you, this is extremely relative because the overwhelming majority of action shows wish they could be a tenth as animated or stylish as this episode was, is pretty much everything around Daddy Dark Knight himself. His gimmick is the same as a billion internet teenagers: "You lose if you care about anything." In the action show parlance, it's "I'm strong because I want to be strong for strongeness's sake. You are weak because you're not dedicated to strongness like me." Almost like some kind of demented protein powder sales pitch. It's puerile at absolute best, and even this wasn't it at its best, flat out announced and then everyone got on with their lives. It was important that Sword win (and he did), but they should've made him lose control to do so. Well-treaded ground, but perfectly servicable. It seemed kind of like they were heading in that direction when it devolved back into a fist to fist brawl, but that's also where it started, and Darko was pontificating through the whole thing. Not so much desperate, or lost temper as… arbitrarily dropping their weapons to go Marquis of Queensbury rules before vanishing in a puff of smoke. Aces then on the action side, but lacking the dramatic weight it definitely could've had.