天下制覇

Can't even copy things without screwing up the execution.

Impressions:

Guys, you'll never guess this, but turns out Mei was just pretending to betray them all along! *gasp* I think the real eyeroll of the episode goes to its abrupt Men In Black "I wasn't training a partner, I was training a replacement, now flashy thingy me" ending. It might've worked had the show just been the two of them, or even if their relationship had actually had any real substance to it, but start to finish, a major problem the entire run had always been that they kept trying to have big sobfests predicated on nothing at all. Hell, even a more antagonistic or comical relationship more like Men In Black would've worked better than trying out another tearjerker moment when it's been attempting to tug at the heartstrings for everything from doing calisthenics to showing up for work. Hell, they made a big todo out of eating lunch in this very episode not two minutes prior. But then possibly the worst/dumbest part? They then took it back right after. Momo didn't flashy thingy her after all that. At least MiB waited a few years until the sequel before crapping all over its own ending instead of doing it as part of the ending itself.

A frustrating ending then. It's easy to see what they were going for, mostly because it was an unmistakable attempt to ape an ending another franchise did much better, except couldn't really come up with anything but "Yay friendship!" which it reverted to all the goddamned time. Kind of sums of the whole show though. Head was in the right place, it was doing mostly the right things at a high level, but the execution, especially on the character/drama fronts, just wasn't there because they were all airheaded twits without any actual flaws, ambitions, personal demons or goals, only believing in yourself and/or your friends. 

Final Thoughts:

For the first month or so, it had a bunch of wacky villains, over the top ninja antics, and mainly suffered from tonal issues with bizarrely grotesque villainy juxtaposed against girls being friendshippy and Megamanesque robot armies with costumed Spiderman antagonist wannabes for the real evildoers. Not a perfect combination, but it could've been a solid one. Unfortunately, it never really developed from there and got stuck in a permanent rut of "Yay friendship" the whole way through. Even that might've at least been tolerable had they handled the Hatsume-Theresa or traitor things that were clearly meant to be the core of the character drama well, but the former got relegated to more off-screen than on, and the latter ended up excessively protracted, unconvincing, and not really all that dramatic, not to mention was in conflict with/didn't make much sense alongside the "Theresa needs to investigate them" stuff. 

It did a decent job of staying focused on the ninja side of things while shoving all the school crap to the side, but it really needed to lean into that more. The weird ninja pets, viking death rays, and mind control super soldier gas stuff could've been fine had they just run with that instead of constantly reverting to "Yay friendship!" Even that might've been passable had they made some kind of character growth or arc out of it, preferably from biting them in the ass. Alas. It never came to pass. They just believed in themselves and each other start to finish, and that was all the character development anybody needed or got. It had nowhere near enough style or flair to be as insubstantial as it ended up.