天下制覇

I guess this isn't as obscure in Japan as in the west.

Impressions:

Run, Melos! really is an actual Japanese story. It's just that it's basically a plagiarized retelling of Die Bürgschaft, so there's no real reason for anybody in the west to know or care about it. Of course, knowing the story is kind of irrelevant because even that show about fairy tales a couple seasons back that was basically the same setup as this engaged with its source materials more than this does. By halfway through the episode, the whole thing had devolved into a lecture listing out the book, its author, the rules of entering books, the rules for authors entering books, the exact nomenclature of the monsters infecting books, the power of magical authors to alchemize themselves into their prettiest forms, so on and so forth. And then, the surprise twist and unclimactic boss fight turned out to be the evil king of the story. What a twist!

Highly recommended if you enjoyed Grimms Notes, but thought that it was too subtle, had too much action, too many twists, too little exposition, too much animation, too many females, and not enough shouting. Not exactly the laundry list of issues with it I would have made, but I don't play terrible gacha games about collecting pretty boys into a harem, so what do I know?

Next Episode:

…