天下制覇

Who can take the most sins?

Impressions:

Shooting Mu in the face was a good start… end… whatever. She was long past the point of hug and make up, no matter how much weird evil absorbing crap they throw in at the last second. Could've worked had they introduced that two months ago, especially as a way that Thorn and Marie were using to corrupt her, but here it just comes off as a fairly abritrary way to escalate her to a last boss through the usual changing of the forms. You know, the usual. Growing wings and a few random extra eyes or appendages on things. In the game, she probably has a true last boss form with angel wings. Either way, before she actually did anything or they were able to fight her, Ritsu and Aria popped in and kicked everyone, because only Protagonist Jesus can really fix anything, which he does by standing there being stabbed repeatedly, in true Jesus fashion. Would it kill this show to have a real fight?

As for the rest, Thorn being revealed to be Random Other Person Who Blames Shogo For Whose-Her-Face Killing Herself was about ten times stupider than I assumed though. The whole Musician side of things didn't make any real sense at all, least of all in the epilogue when they all apparently happily went back to their former lives straight from trying to engage in mass murder, complete with the token speech from Ritsu about facing your problems and being optimistic. I think that we missed a few fairly important steps along the way, especially when it came to certain mass bombers that we've apparently just tossed in the bin. Nothing all that surprising or unexpected though, for weal or woe.

Final Thoughts:

A frustrating show. When it actually engaged with its central premise, giving frustrated teenagers super powers in a superficial utopia instead of facing their problems, it was actually pretty fun, especially when the music kicked in and everything was going out of control. Unfortunately, only two characters really come to mind as taking their powers and immediately using them to throw down. One of them was all but written out of the show immediately afterward (well, as much as any character had any presence in the show), and the other was the surprise twist villain who had about half an episode to herself where she stole the show in one of the rare examples of something actually working pretty well. Granted, she should've been a lot more present in general, both as a bomber and as a muggle, for the betrayal to mean a little more, but compared to… say… the Genet-Jill thing in Cutie Honey…

The biggest issue is the characters. It's like we only got the first act to all of them. Having awoken to their pasts, they could've easily been used as foils against the antagonists, but we only got so far as their awakenings before hastily skipping over all the rest. Special attention goes out to Mu and Ritsu, ostensibly the primary protagonist and antagonist, but both flubbed horribly. Mu was presented as a well-intentioned naive idiot, trying to make a superficial utopia because she didn't know any better. Then they reveal that it also has secret torture buildings, and if mass murder makes someone happy, she's all for it. Yet they persisted with the idea that she was just naive. Ritsu on the other hand just kind of hung around the whole thing, gradually learning the power of friendship, only to somehow magically pop out into the real world, declare "friendship sucks, I am JESUS HIMSELF", kick everyone out, and fix everything… thanks to a coworker's unquestioning faith in him. Whatever they were going for with his character is completely muddled and simply a mess.

The pieces were there, and it does have a few fun moments, but it very much comes off as about a ten episode introduction and then a few episodes hastily wrapping everything up. They had more than enough time to develop those characters, especially had they jettisoned all the bits of Ritsu mumbling philosophically to himself, but it seemed either unwilling or unable to throw itself into its own premise and actually engage with it.