天下制覇

Oh boy, half an episode of torture porn.

Impressions:

Could've been worse. Could've been an entire episode of torture porn, but as usual, a huge part of the episode is spent faffing around about the bureaucracy. And as if torture porn itself isn't bad enough, it was set to two dudes reading out of Wikipedia about Russian monsters. And then things get really weird when they're in the middle of magic-waterboarding her and go "Hey, what's the endgame plan here anyway?" and we get an aside to explain that. Which makes it about five straight minutes of straight up exposition set to the background noise of whimpering. For once, it wasn't just the sound of me whimpering as I suffered through it. And if you think that's weird, by the time the good guys finally show up, some 17 minutes into the episode, practically the first goddamned thing that happens is an expository cutaway to explain what magic truth serum is. Here, let me inject him with magic truth serum. MAGICAL GIRL TRIVIA SIDEBAR! MAGICAL TRUTH SERUM IS A SERUM THAT IS MAGICAL AND MAKES PEOPLE TELL THE TRUTH! Yeah, that's something that we needed to take a time out to explicitly explain to the audience, because the respect the show has for the audience is approaching nil. God, at least embrace the campiness if you're going to go all Bat Shark Repellant on us.

My main question though is that I want to know what anybody's plan even was. The good guys start out by sneaking in, only to kick down the door where the hostage is, completely abandoning all subtlety. The bad guys all wait in the room with the hostage, cut off an arm, and then just stand there and let the good guys run off. Wasn't that supposed to be some kind of trap? Or was it really just "take random hostage, kill her, ???, ultimate magic girl"? If having a brawl in the middle of the street… after explaining your goddamned magic powers and fighting style no less… was a perfectly acceptable plan B, then why the convoluted kidnap and torture nonsense of plan A? I should also mention that the same amount of effort went into animating that scene as did writing it. Good god, the stills. Just… so many stills.

Next Episode:

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