天下制覇

I don't get this arc.

Impressions:

You know what every action scenes? A long cut away to people sitting on the sidelines to talk in the extreme abstract about the reason they're fighting, while not fighting? What the hell even was that little scene? Although it's not like the rest was any better directed. Animated, sure. This was the most action packed episode of the show to date, and deserves praise for that if nothing else, and punting on even pretending like there was any kind of large plot to focus on the battle of the episode is fine as well. In at least those ways, it was the best the show's been to date.

Where it still continues to struggle is pretty much anything and everything having to do with the characters. The main duo being the worst/stupidest, even above and beyond the above-mentioned crapitude. They continued to effortlessly murder everything in their paths, struggling only with the terrible price, but managing to overcome it thanks to the power of trying slightly harder and/or believing in each other slightly more. No catharsis, epiphany, or anything like that. Just the standard grunt and power up after spending literally five straight minutes being punched against a wall. Count them. It's literally a quarter of the goddamned episode. There was also the super weird seeming comparison to Team Black, who started out the episode organized and efficient while Team Protagonist was tripping over each other and incompetent. And then when the real monster came out, the two teams abruptly switched roles for about 15 seconds before Team Black was totally written out of the episode and returned only to celebrate the triumph of grunting and believe in oneself. Whatever the lesson or point was there, the only one I picked up was "grunt more, and maybe hugs."