天下制覇

These people desperately need some lessons on interpersonal relationships.

Impressions:

Since last week's episode was hard on the animation budget and nearly passable on the writing front, this week's had to be a mess on all fronts. All the stuff around Anna was the most galling, but also nothing really new. In a world with sane writers, her family and Ernesta would be actually trying to fix things while Suishou plays the role of Iago, whispering in her ear and twisting things. In this world, however, we get her mother and Moonbrain telling her how they never believed in her, always thought she was crap, any successes she might have had mean nothing because she was born trash and trash she will always be. It is her destiny to be crap, and that they've been lying to her and humoring her for her entire life. But it's for her own good that she understands she's trash, so it's out of love that we want to smack you down so hard you abandon all your hopes and dreams… somehow. And this was just today. It's no wonder she's a mentally unstable lunatic swinging around a battleax at the slightest provocation. Kind of feel that you brought the matricide on yourself there, champ.

But that's just the 'highlight' of the episode. The other half was no less perplexing. It was about equally split between Nene taking the loss like it was nothing more than a skinned knee, and a little cooking bit with Kuon which I guess was just to spur another conversation about how Mangetsu's just bumbling around. A weird conversation too, because the premise it laid out was "Everyone but me is fighting for something really important." But are they? Are they really? The only one fighting for something concrete is the one trying to save her sister from magical coma. Everyone else is in it for abstract platitutudes. Well, not sure what Suishou's in it for, but a good bet that it's just to watch the world burn. No doubt this is all leading to Mangetsu discovering that she cares about things, and she's going to protect the things she cares about. Gag me with a spoon.

Next Episode:

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