天下制覇

How did he even get out in the first place? Did I just nap through that?

Impressions:

If only the entire show, especially the last four weeks, had been like this. Marie especially was a far more fun villain than any of the others, even though she hasn't gotten a sappy backstory bit, so I'm sure they'll still make a solid go at ruining her. She hits the sweet spot of sadistic, competent, and only a few lines between every explosion/attempt to murder the cast. They should have really been playing up her and Thorn (well, no doubt Shogo himself projecting her ghost or whatever), or even all the Musicians, corrupting Mu from the start, as that works about ten thousand times better than her just being a well intentioned imbecile.

Ritsu's backstory forms the other half of the episode and more miss than hit. He's not terribly surprisingly the original creator of the whole she-bang as a frustrated outcast, jealous of the popular guy who was nothing but nice to him and tried to be his friend. So he gives this big speech about how bad it was for him to be sullen and dopey… followed by angrily screaming at the guy, who is continuing to do nothing but unquestioning support him, that he needs to screw off because he is Jesus incarnate and must do everything personally. Weren't we going for the power of friendship here? Indulging in his Messiah Complex and then celebrating it as him finally overcoming… whatever… doesn't follow at all. Especially when he's banging on about saving Mu instead of kill -9ing the clearly runaway buggy nonsense he unleashed.