天下制覇

Couldn't we at least have done some of the stuff from the books?

Just to say something in lieu of a full post on Neverland because I have a massive head cold, still not buying into it. Everything's moving at a snail's pace and then it picks a random moment for them to start gasping and wheezing in terror. This episode didn't have any of the body horror to back it up either. They were just sort of vaguely checking around (ie mostly explaining things to the camera) with the big bad popping over to glower so they could shiver and shake. Wash, rinse, repeat. The quintuplet harem thing… ugh. That's all I want to say about that, but I will mention that its low point is when he was chasing one of them, lost sight of her for a moment, turned a corner and faceplanted into her chest, but because she put a ribbon in her hair, thought it was a completely different one. The one with hair half the length and a completely different color. That was somehow the bridge of stupidity too far for me.

Impressions:

Not that this episode was really any better than either, and I leave the option open to bail on this and go back to either next week if the mood takes me. Probably worse in a lot of ways, but hey, I embrace my contrarian streak.

The gimmick this week was "Don Quixote's delusions are real." And… that's unfortunately where things both start and end. You'd think there would be some kind of twist on it, like the illusion was being maintained by Dulcinea because it's literally keeping her existence intact, or him to be a real hero, or even Random Big Baddie who popped up for about 5 seconds to assert Big Baddie status before futzing off again is using him to drive windmill prices down, but there's none of that whatsoever. Hell, they could have even hid the identities of people a little bit to reveal it's a Don Quixote thing only at the end instead of the very beginning. Not even any jokes or the like really about X being put into the Sancho role, which is also just kind of dropped once the windmill giant shows up. Even that's defeated by one-shotting it with X's alternative cross-dressing mode into pyro Red Riding Hood, because I guess pyrokinesis is Red Riding Hood's power? Also, he's like Megaman and can become girls he beats up apparently? What a mess of abject nonsense and plunging production from already low-end to standard godawful Brains Base.