天下制覇

The sure sign of a well constructed character.

Impressions:

I feel like dropping a marker and just declaring that any show in which a character not only brings up a status screen giving a numerical readout of what they can and can't do, but goes ahead and says "I need more point in X" is stupid, dumb, and not worth anybody's time. There's something kind of pathetic and desperate about not being able to show that a character is a badass, but just saying "he has a lot of stats." Perhaps it wouldn't be so bad if they then didn't also try to show after telling and half-ass that so badly. Like always, the god mode protagonist is simply invulnerable, and vanquishes everything with an effortless wave of his hand, or in this case, a flourish of his cape like a demented flasher. That's also close to as much animation was in the entire episode. A shoestring may be a step up.

It's largely a generic exercise in tedium, but the ending probably should get some mention if for no other reason as that's where the writing goes from nonexistent to bat-guano crazy. He drops his little savior-complex waif into a village of psychopaths and then gets a call from Evil Incarnate telling him that since he programmed a world with bad people, all bad things are his fault. At this point, he heroically decides to do exactly what the voice says and torch the village because, after all, the only way to combat evil is with extra petty evil, at which point he gives a speech about the inherent goodness and innocence of waifs. The reason why Frank Castle doesn't proselytize isn't because he lacks a helpless little girl of his own, and, for that matter, firebomb entire villages in a fit of pique.

Next Episode:

…